SIGHT
by Ian Johnston

[Note: this is a completed but unedited novel written for National
Novel Writing Month 2012.  The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days.
They don't have to be good words, there's no goal about story or making
sense, or characters that aren't paper cut-outs.  If I manage to
achieve any of those things, bonus!  Please read with that context in
mind.]

Aurelia set the phone down carefully, not trusting herself to be
gentle.  She looked at her hand, and decided it wasn't shaking.

She got up, and walked over to the sink, where she filled a glass with
water, and drank it down in one long gulp.  She filled it again,
debated for a moment, then drank half of it before tossing the rest
down the drain.

The phone rang again.  Aurelia started, nearly knocking the glass over.
Again trying to be calm, she walked back to the couch and sat down,
picking up the phone to see who was calling.  The screen showed the
name Jenn.  Aurelia answered.

"Hey Jenn," she said.

"Woah," came the reply.  "What's wrong, you sound like you just saw a
ghost or something.  I'd swear, if I saw you, you would be pale and
shaking."

Aurelia paused, then couldn't contain it any longer.  "Jason broke up
with me!" she half-shrieked, half-sobbed, and cried without restraint.
On the other end of the connection, Jenn made soothing noises.

Once Aurelia's sobs had calmed a bit, Jenn said, "Hey, Aurey, I'm
coming over, ok?  Sounds like you could use a shoulder.  What flavor do
you want?"

"Chunky Monkey," came the feeble reply.  Jenn knew just what to do.

"I'll be there in 20 minutes.  If you're gonna do anything stupid, wait
until I'm there to live-tweet it, ok?"

Aurelia uttered a half-laugh, which was as much as Jenn had hoped for.
"Ok."

Chapter

"So then, he says, 'Hey, no hard feelings, right babe?  I mean, this
kinda thing happens all the time.  It's nothing personal.'"  Aurelia
made a face and savagely jammed another spoonful of ice cream into her
mouth.  The cold sweetness was as calming as anything she could think
of.

"I... did he really say that?  Did he really say that cheating on you
and then breaking up over the phone happens all the time?  What a
douchebag!"  Jenn curled her mouth under in disgust.

"Yes.  I just sat there.  I must have sat there holding the phone up to
my ear for like 2 minutes, just silent.  I couldn't think of anything
to say.  I mean, two years, down the drain!  Why did he give me this
fucking ring, if he was just going to go cheat on me with that skank?
What was the point of all that, just get my hopes up, then smash them
to the ground?  Who the hell does he think he is?"  Another spoonful of
ice cream disappeared.

"It's so weird, but I always kinda wondered about him.  I mean, I could
totally see why you liked him, and he seemed like a good guy, but I
always had this feeling in the back of my head, you know?"  Jenn
twirled her frosted blonde hair around a finger idly, tapping a finger
on her other had against the tabletop unconsciously.  Her fingernail
was a dark red color, the color slightly chipped where days of living
life had removed the perfection of a recent manicure.

Aurelia sat in silence, slowly working the ice cream around in her
mouth.  The pint container was almost empty, and she was vaguely aware
of guilty feelings hovering around the periphery of her anger and pain
at Jason's treachery.  It was good ice cream, and she deserved it.
Still.

Finally, she said, "What am I gonna do?"  She looked around the meager
apartment, 700 square feet of Capitol Hill dankness, complete with a
suspicion of mold, terrible carpet that looked like it was installed in
the 70s, and a humidity to the air that suggested zero circulation.
The apartment was practically furnished with memories of Jason.  He had
spent half his life there.  She did not like to think about the
impending discomfort of him arriving to retrieve all his stuff.

Jenn looked thoughtful.  "Maybe you should just totally break out of
life.  Do something totally different, ya know?  Like... go to Disney
Land, or go blonde, or learn to skydive or something.  You've got that
friend who does the aerials, right?  Why not try that out?  You need
something to get your mind off Jason."

"That's not a bad thought.  But...I don't know if I'm ready for all
that.  I mean....." She looked around the apartment again.  "I think I
just need some time to think about it.  You're right," she added
hastily, seeing that Jenn was about to say something, "you're right, I
should totally do something to get out of my normal life.  Just, in a
little while, ya know?"

Jenn nodded sagely.  "Yeah, that's cool.  I see what you mean.  Chill
out for a bit, but not too long, right?"

"Right."

Jenn nodded again.  "So, I don't want to totally freak you out or
anything, but did you see what Brad Pitt did?"  She trailed off into
minutiae about the latest celebrity gossip, rapidly swiping and typing
on the screen of her phone, bringing up pictures and speculation.

Aurelia listened with half an ear.  Jenn was right.  She did need to do
something to break out of her life.

Chapter

Aurelia Stanton was a fairly average 23 year old woman.  She had just
graduated from the University of Washington with a mostly useless
degree in Philosophy, with a minor in Political Science.  It had seemed
like a fun major to pursue, but she was discovering the hard way that
the jokes about Philosophy majors with punchlines like, "Do you want
fries with that?" weren't far from the truth.

She stood 5' 10" tall, making her almost as tall as most of the guys she
had dated, and had wavy, dark hair with freckled but pale skin.  Although
she'd been part of a sorority at UW, it had never really suited her
well, and Jenn was the only friend she'd kept up with since graduating.
Her sorority sisters had been cool with her ever since she gained some
weight in Junior year.  She lost a lot of it again, but she was
markedly aware of how superficial they seemed to be after that.

She had, at this point in her life, succeeded only in landing a job as
a receptionist at a local law firm.  It was a short walk down the hill
to work, and she was good at it, with a ready smile most of the time,
and an organized mind.  She was pretty enough to keep the senior
partners happy, and they assumed, because she was pretty, that she was
dumb enough to stay happy at the job.

Her leisure time was filled with nothing in particular.  She wasn't
actually sure where all her time went.  She knew that she worked
exactly eight hours a day, from 8:30 to 5, with a half hour lunch break.
There were logically fifteen and a half more hours in the day, of which
she typically slept around 7.  The remaining hours seemed to disappear
between Facebook and Twitter, television, and hanging out with friends.

Jenn was a good friend, and they had known each other since junior high
school.  She'd thought Jason was a good friend as well, although
plainly that was not the case.  She didn't think she could be friends
with him again, and though was a stab of pain about not only what he
did, but the manner in which he'd done it.

They'd met at a mixer on campus, and had started dating a month later.
He was a computer science major, and would frequently break into long
expositions on some problem or other he was having with an assignment,
or with the game he was trying to write in his spare time.  He
graduated a year before she did, and immediately got hired into a small
start-up that was programming apps for the iPhone.  She never had a
clear sense of what he did there, but it seemed to be important, and he
seemed to be getting paid well for his work.

Their relationship was marked by a relatively short romance, followed
by a sort of maintenance state in which they'd alternate staying at
each others' apartment, infrequently going out to movies or concerts.
Their tastes in music overlapped a bit, but not too much, with him
preferring classic rock, and she preferring a variety of pop music.
She liked to dance, but he didn't, claiming he looked stupid.  Aurelia
thought Jason looked pretty good on the dance floor, but he sulked if
she tried to drag him out when he wasn't in the mood.  Their interests
were poorly aligned in other areas: he would play violent,
first-person-shooter video games while she read trashy romance novels;
he drove a recent model BMW (about which he complained perpetually due
to the high payments), while she walked.

Still, she was having a hard time getting over the break-up.  Jason was
the first person she'd ever felt she was truly in love with.  She'd
said the words many times, but Jason, despite all his flaws, had felt
like the real thing.  Obviously there was some hesitation, since they'd
never tried to move in together or anything, but she thought they would
some day.  She thought they might get married and have a kid or two,
and she'd constructed elaborate fantasies about a house in the suburbs
and vacations in Mexico or the Bahamas.  She'd imagined the minivan
(and found herself looking back incredulously at this thought) that
they would get to help transport their children to soccer practice and
flute lessons.

In part, this was fantasy born of rebellion.  She'd been raised by her
divorced mother in a series of terrible relationships, in and out of
apartments of her mother's boyfriends, with occasional periods where
they would live out of her mother's car.  They weren't exactly poor,
but there were certainly times when money was tight.  She didn't want
to grow up to become her mother, dependent upon horrible men who drank
too much and cheated and lied.  There was a twinge of recognition there
-- had she subconsciously sought in Jason the same kind of terrible
man that she'd seen her mother so often fail to acknowledge?

That was a line of thought best not pursued.

Chapter

Aurelia looked up from her monitor into the face of a smiling man in a
suit.  He was, in the context of law firm clients, utterly
unremarkable.  She only registered his presence because he didn't seem
to move away from in front of her desk.

"How can I help you, sir?" she asked, in a measured tone.

"I'm here to see Mr. Fernandez."  His smile remained in place.

She resisted the urge to turn around and see what was behind her, which
she knew for a fact to be a wall covered in old, leatherbound law
books.  "Do you have an appointment, sir?"  She turned to her computer
and switched to the calendar program.

"Yes," he said, hesitating for a moment.  "But I was just enjoying the
view so much..."  He trailed off.  She glanced back.  He was still
smiling.

"If you have an appointment, I'm sure Mr. Fernandez is expecting you.
His office is that way," she said, pointing off to her right, where all
the offices were.  The reception area of the firm was tastefully
appointed, on the 37th floor of a building in downtown Seattle, mere
minutes from the County and Federal courthouses.  A conspicuous hallway
led to the offices.  She was starting to get creeped out by his smile,
which was unwavering.  She was reminded of some boy in 7th grade, who'd
asked her to a school dance in a manner very similar to this.

He didn't take the hint.  "What are you doing tonight, beautiful?"

She struggled with her competing urges to be professional versus
standing carefully on his instep with her heel while rapidly rotating
his nose until it pointed upward.  Professionalism won, mostly by dint
of the fact that she didn't think he would hesitate to press charges, and
she wasn't, as she thought of herself, the kind of girl who would do that.

"I'm sorry sir, I'm not allowed to fraterize with clients.  I'll call
Mr. Fernandez and let him know you're here."  She busied herself with
her mouse and picked up the phone handset.  She considered for a moment
whether he would be so bold as to cut off the call.  She watched his
hand out of the corner of her eye.  Would he try it?  He was standing
close enough to press down on the switch in a moment.

She was saved from the situation by the arrival of Mr. Fernandez.

"Jason, how's it going?  It's not like you to be late, I was just
wondering where you were!  Step into my office, we can get started."
Aurelia cringed very slightly at the too-familiar name.  Trying to
forget about Jason and his treachery wasn't proving to be easy.  She
saw, as he passed, that the man Mr. Fernandez had called Jason was
wearing a wedding ring.  Douchebag, she thought to herself, and
suddenly found a wall of grief rushing at her.

She picked up the phone and quickly dialed.  "Melinda, I need to step
away from the front desk for a moment, can you cover for me?"
Melinda's assent was barely uttered before Aurelia dropped the receiver
on the cradle, and walked rapidly to the ladies' room.  She dropped
onto a toilet and closed the stall door as quietly as she could, hot
tears running down her face.  She couldn't help laughing, amid the
wash of emotion, that her mascara would be trailing down her face in
dark streaks, and of course her purse was behind the front desk.

Chapter

St. John's was a bar on Capitol Hill that wasn't far from her
apartment, and offered a convenient meeting place.  They also served
some food, but mostly it was a drinking establishment.  Aurelia was
seated with Jenn, as well as Stacey, and John, Stacey's boyfriend.

"And then," said Aurelia, almost crossing her eyes with perplexity,
"when he came back from the office, the jerk actually grabbed my chin
and said, 'Buck up, beautiful, I'll be back.'  I'm surprised he didn't
try to grab my ass, he was that kind of douche."

"Ugh," said Stacey, taking a pull off her drink, which was bright red,
and looked sticky-sweet.  "Why are men such assholes?"  John didn't
even react -- he knew he was exempt from this kind of statement.  He
did look thoughtful, and was on the verge of saying something in
defense of his gender, when Jenn broke in.

"It's because they have all the power.  He has a wife, probably a ton
of money if he's at your firm in the first place, and is probably just
used to getting what he wants.  How old was this guy?"

Aurelia said, "I dunno, I guess he was in his 30s.  I couldn't really
tell, and I didn't want to look too hard.  That smile was fucking
creepy."

"Yeah, so he's been in some business for a dozen years, made his pile,
thinks he owns the world."  Jenn paused to flag down the waitress and
ordered another drink.  "I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to
Facebook stalk you or something.  Don't accept friend requests from any
strange men," she smiled broadly and kicked Aurelia's leg gently under
the table.

"Ha-ha," said Aurelia drily.  "No chance in hell."  She brushed a hair
out of her eyes and took another sip of the drink that had arrived in
front of her.  "What is this, anyway?"

"Moscow Mule," said Stacey.  "You hate these girl-drinks, don't you?"

"Yeah.  This is pretty good."  She took another sip.  "This could
become a habit."

"Careful, drinky-clown, you still have to work tomorrow," said Jenn,
her eyes bright with laughter.

"Since when are you my mom?  I'm a big girl, I can do what I want."
Aurelia took another drink to prove her independence.  "You're right
though, I do have to work tomorrow."  She sighed.  "I hope douche-man
doesn't have to come back.  I should have checked the schedule.  Jason
Simpson.  A name to avoid."

"Hey," said Stacey, glancing playfully at John, but speaking to
Aurelia, "we've got a guy you should meet."

"Oh god, not yet!  Not if I'm crying at work and fending off daddy
types."

"It might do you good.  You went out with Jason like literally forever.
Maybe you just need a good screw with no consequences."  Stacey's face
was alight with mischief, a condition it was well familiar with.

"Two years is not 'like literally forever,' and anyway, it's not like I
was the sex-crazed one.  Anyway..." Aurelia trailed off, and looked
down into her drink.

"Hey, come on, I was just kidding," said Stacey, the mischevious look
gone, replaced by concern.

Aurelia took a moment to master herself, but even so her voice was
shaky.  "I know, I'm just... I guess I'm just not ready yet, ok?"  She
wiped an errant hint of moisture from her eye.  She looked up again,
and immediately looked down.  Jenn turned around to try spotting what
had caused the reaction.

"What?"

"It's that douchebag.  What the hell is he doing in my bar?"  She put
her hand up against the side of her face, letting her hair fall across
her face, hoping that he wouldn't recognize her.

"Oh look, he's here with his lovely wife," said Stacey drily, idly
sipping on the straw of her sticky red drink.  John looked over as
well.  "That guy?"

"Don't point, I don't want him to come over here.  Let's go, ok?"
Aurelia kept her head down, a hot flush spreading across her cheeks.

"It's just a guy with his wife.  Whatever, he won't bother us."  John
spoke with the nonchalance of innocence.

"No, that is a grade-A jerk.  He's probably got his jerk-dar going at
full tilt, looking for his next victim."  Jenn spoke evenly, staring
steadily at the man across the room from the quartet.

"You guys, just quit it, alright?  Eyes back here, pretend he's not
there.  I don't need another asshole treatment from him, ok?  God, I'm
gonna have to find a different bar now."  Aurelia's face was fully
flushed at this point, between the ginger in her drink, and the thought
of Jason returning to torment her further.

Jenn turned around to face the group again.  "Don't worry about it,
he's probably up from the theater or something.  They're just sitting
down and having a drink.  He won't be back."  Stacey and John shared a
look across the table.

Chapter

The law office was in moderate chaos as Aurelia walked in.  She looked
around, feeling a bit lost.  She was arriving at her normal time, about
8:15, and it was unusual to see anyone actively working at that hour.
Yet here were people hurrying to and fro with arms full of file
folders.  She set her bag down behind the desk, and hung up her coat on
the rack.  Her hair, which was never the best behaved when the weather
was windy, was in need of a restraining hand, so she stepped into the
restroom to fix herself up in the mirror.

As she was tucking an errant wisp of hair away, she heard a sound
coming from one of the stalls, which sounded like a muffled sob.
Remembering her own recent breakdown, she knocked tentatively on the
closed stall door, and said, "Is everything ok?"

Whoever was in the stall audibly inhaled, and there was the sound of
fabring being smoothed down.  "No, not entirely."

Aurelia recognized the voice.  "Oh, Melinda, are you ok?  What's going
on out there?"

Melinda opened the door.  Her eyes were red, but she was otherwise
composed.  "Mr. Nelson was just taken away by Federal marshalls."

Aurelia stood shocked for a moment, her mouth hanging open slightly.
"What?  You mean our Mr. Nelson?  Senior Partner Fred Nelson?  What
for?"

"They read him his rights, and took him away.  I think he didn't look
too surprised.  The fact that they were Feds suggests it wasn't a minor
thing."

Aurelia looked back in the direction of the offices, then back to
Melinda's face.  "But...  What could he have done?"

"I don't know.  We're going through things now.  Mr. Muntz should be
here any minute."

"Oh."  That meant things were serious.  Mr. Muntz was the senior senior
partner, and largely absent from the day to day business of the firm.
He was a bald, corpulent man in his 60s, who put Aurelia in mind of a
tortoise the handful of times she'd seen him in her year and a half as
receptionist.  He had proven to have a short temper, no doubt due in
part to the fact that he was only called in when things were not going
well on a case.

"We'd better get back out there.  Muntz won't be pleased to see his
employees colluding in the john."  Melinda checked her face in the
mirror, swiped angrily at one lone tear, and walked stiffly out the
door.  Aurelia followed, somewhat dazed.

Fred Nelson was an avuncular man in his late 50s, who looked like he
would be most at home behind a tumbler full of whiskey and a smelly
cigar.  His craggy eyebrows had a habit of waggling conspiratorially,
which made everone who spoke to him feel like they were in on something
together.  He was, as far as Aurelia could tell, a skilled lawyer, and
had racked up an impressive case history.  She had a feeling, but
didn't know for sure, that he charged $600 per hour, which was a number
that was frankly beyond her comprehension as an hourly rate.  She was
paid $16 per hour.

She sat at her desk, and assumed her normal duties, which largely
consisted of answering the phone and directing calls, plus smiling as
people walked in the door and helping them if they seemed to need it.
Her world didn't seem to be too affected by the disappearance of Mr.
Nelson, at first, but the attitude in the office was very tense.  She
greeted Mr. Muntz as he walked gruffly in and breezed past her toward
his office.  He didn't deign to acknowledge her greeting.

Around lunch time, Melinda stopped at Aurelia's desk and said in a low
murmur, "How would you feel about going over some files for me?"  She
dropped a small stack of manila folders on the desk.

"What do you want me to do with them?"

"See this list?"  Melinda handed her a list of 20 words.  "If you spot
any of these keywords in titles or headings, put a sticky note there so
we can find it later.  We're just trying to narrow things down at this
time."

Aurelia looked over the list, spotting the name of the mayor, several
business names she'd vaguely heard of, as well as the names of some
countries she was aware existed, although she would have been helpless
if presented with a map and asked to locate them.  "Ok," she said,
taking the list and the files.  "Do I need to do anytning else, or just
mark any words I find?"

"Just mark the places you find any of these words.  Don't worry about
trying to figure out what any of it means."  Melinda cast a sour glance
back toward the offices.  "Muntz isn't saying, but he clearly has a
pretty good idea what's going on.  He came up with that list in about 5
minutes."

Aurelia nodded, and thumbed open the first file.  Melinda's attitude
suggested strongly to her that this was... what, perhaps a futile
search?  No, more than that, this was doomed in some way.  Aurelia kept
her head down, and started scanning files.

By the end of the day, she was exhausted.  Not from searching files,
but rather from the pervasive sense of doom and failure in the firm.
Everyone had spent the day with their head down.  Frowns were the
facial expression of the day.  Muntz had stormed about hurling insults
at anyone who got in his way.  Aurelia was filled with a distinct sense
that the downward path of the day was not temporary.

Her premonintion was fulfilled the next day.  She arrived to find a
slow but steady stream of the firm's employees leaving, boxes tucked
under their arms, with a look of finality about them.  Mr. Muntz
visited her personally around 10 am.

"Ah, Miss... Stanton.  I'm sorry to say, we're severely curtailing the 
operations of Nelson and Muntz as of today, and your services are no
longer required.  You will be mailed a severance check equal to two
months at your current pay rate.  I'll thank you to return any of the
firm's resources which are in your possession, including cellular
telephones, computers, etc.  Do you have anything like that?"  Aurelia
shook her head mutely, and Muntz continued, "Good.  I'm sorry it has to
end this way," Aurelia had a distinct sense he was talking about his
own situation, and not hers, "but that's the course we must follow at
this time.  Please sign this."  He set down a two page double-spaced
document in front of her.

"What is it?"

"It's an agreement stating that you accept the terms of your
termination, including the severance pay, and I bring this closely to
your attention: that you will not discuss your period of employment
here with anyone unless compelled by subpoena or similar legal means.
This includes speaking with your friends, or any members of the press
who may contact you.  Is that clear?"

"Y-yes," stammered Aurelia, overawed at his demeanor, which was at once
both resigned and aggressive.  She signed on the second page without
reading the paper, which was laden with the very finest legalese and
more or less incomprehensible to a Philosophy major, even with a minor
in Poly Sci.

And with that, she was gone.  Her belongings at the office consisted of
a picture of her mother and the coat and purse she'd brought that
morning.  She walked out the door an unemployed woman with an
apparently-disgraced law firm as her one solid reference after
graduation.

She sat down at a coffee shop down the street from the highrise she'd
just exited, and pulled out her phone.  She looked at it dejectedly,
suddenly thinking about the hundred dollars per month she was paying
for the privilege of being able to load Facebook and Pinterest anywhere
she happened to be.  She fired up the Twitter app, and wrote, "Dumped by my
dbag ex and fired all in two weeks #FML #fail"

Chapter
Aurelia stood at the edge of a precipice.  Around her swirled clouds,
slowly twirling into tendrils that beckoned and enticed her.  Below,
miles and miles below, was the crashing sea, dark purples and blues
angrily foaming to white where sharp rocks ripped through the waters
like dull, menacing knife blades.  The wind whipped her gown, which was
white and flowing in a way more appropriate to a Disney film than a
Philosophy major, into billowing sworls.

She looked down at the sea without any fear.  Next to her, as she
looked up, stood Jason, smiling enigmatically.  He closed his eyes and
turned his face toward the heavens, grabbing her hand in his.  She
looked back at the sea, then up at the tendrils of cloud which gently
embraced her.

Through the clouds came something huge, like a dragon or a blimp,
moving slowly as a shadow against the sky.  It moved silently, stubby
wings sculling the air.  Aurelia couldn't see exactly what it was, and
her curiosity overcame her.  She stepped out onto the air and padded
toward it.  She could feel Jason following her, and knew that if she
looked back, he would have that bemused expression on his face that was
so familiar.

As she padded closer and closer, the air firm and supportive under her
feet, the giant shape slowly resolved itself into a shape that she
found recognizable in some odd, primal way.  The shape resolved in the
clouds, morphing into what she now recognized as a dinosaur.  It swung
its huge head toward her, and its craggy, conspiratorial eyebrows put
her in mind of someone she knew.

"I didn't know," she said to the dinosaur.  It shook its head in the
negative.  "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, feeling like a small
child.  Behind her, the air resolved itself into a towering room that
was familiar: her bedroom from when she was 6.  The walls covered with
peeled and yellowing paint.  She could hear shouting through the walls,
but couldn't make out the words.  The tone was familiar: her mother
fighting with a boyfriend. 

She turned over, pulling the blanket over her head, and she felt Jason
snuggle in behind her, his warm breath tickling her neck.  She sank
back into his warmth, his faint scent filling her nostrils, as her
mother leaned over her bed.  Aurelia felt the covers shift, and looked
over to see her mother deeply engrossed in a long kiss with Jason, who
was reaching up and running his fingers through her hair.

Aurelia awoke with a start.  She stared up at the ceiling, which was
painted with diagonal stripes of light from a light outside,
filtered through partially closed horizontal blinds.  The room was lit
in a reddish hue from the bedside clock-radio.  She looked over, where
Jason should have been.  The bed was empty, as it had been for weeks.
A bleak, empty feeling stole over her as she remembered tendrils of the
fading dream.

She checked her phone, out of habit.  It showed no annuniciators for
unread text messages or missed calls, and she put it back down on the
pillow next to her with a disappointed sigh.

Chapter

Jenn and Aurelia sat in their seats, staring at screen as the film
flickered to a stop, and the house lights came up.  Most of the other
audience members had left during the credits.  Aurelia always liked
watching the credits for some reason, and justified it to anyone who
asked by saying that sometimes filmmakers would throw little bonus
scenes into the credits, or after the end of them.  That had not been
true in this case.  The movie had simply petered out with a whimper.

Jenn looked at Aurelia.  "What the hell was that."  It wasn't even a
question, more a statement of incredulity.

"I don't even know.  What was that.. thing?  In the middle?"

"You mean when he..."

"Yeah!  What the fuck was that?"

"She seemed to like it.  I don't think I would have, though.  Wayyyyy
too much, I dunno.  Just too much.  Blech."  Aurelia made a face.

"Ugh, tell me about it.  How was that possibly supposed to be a
romantic movie."  Jenn looked at Aurelia, breaking the spell.  "Let's
get outta here."

"Ok."

They got up, and walked past the overflowing garbage can just outside
the theater door, into the lobby with its garishly-colored carpet.  The
smell of popcorn had faded into the background in the theater, and they only
noticed it again as the lobby's popcorn machine exuded its aroma of hot
butter into the room.

Out on the street, it was dark, and a heavy overcast rolled across the
sky.  The ground was wet, but it wasn't actually raining.  The
temperature was the standard "around 40 degrees" that Seattle seems to
default to in the winter.  Aurelia hugged her jacket closer to her as
they walked up the hill towards home.

After a few minutes of walking silently together, Aurelia broke the
silence.  "How do you do it, Jenn?"

"Do what?"

"You just seem so happy.  I mean, you're single and working part time
at Trader Joe's.  You wanted more than that, right?  So why are you so
happy?"

"I dunno.  Being single is like whatever.  Trader Joe's is kinda cool,
at least no one there is uptight or anything.  It's just brainless work
that I can do without having to be engaged, you know?"

"God, that would drive me crazy!"  Aurelia shook her head.

"Well, your job was kind of brainless, wasn't it?"

"I guess, in a way.  I didn't think of it that way, but... maybe I was
fooling myself.  I guess I was kind of just a pretty face to them.  The
most interesting work I got was the day before I was fired."

"You were laid off," Jenn reminded her.  "Big difference.  You get
unemployment when you're laid off.  If you're fired, bam, you're shit
outta luck."

"Yeah, sure.  But, the whole thing is just so depressing, you know?  I
felt so happy when I had a job and a boyfriend, and everything seemed
to be going so well.  Sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was really good.
Now, that's all gone.  What do I have left?"

"Oh, come on," said Jenn, chidingly.  "You're hardly an old maid, and
you stayed at your last job until you were laid off.  That looks way
better on a resume than quitting after a few months or someting.
You've got all sorts of stuff going for you."

"I feel old and wasted, though.  No one's going to want to date me, I'm
old now."

"You are not old.  You're 23.  Calm down.  I see lots of guys on
OkCupid who are in their 30s and 40s, so obviously dating still
happens, right?"  Jenn jabbed her friend with her forefinger playfully.

Aurelia scowled, determined not to be broken out of her funk.  "I don't
want to date men who are in their 30s and 40s Jenn, that sounds awful."

"You know that's not what I mean.  I just mean you should calm down.
Your chance is coming."  They walked in silence for another few
minutes.

"So, I'm really not kidding, Jenn.  What do you do to stay happy?"

"I don't know, I just am happy.  I don't do anything.  I've got Sugar
Cheeks," she paused reflecting.  "Maybe you should get a cat."

"I don't want a cat.  Sugar Cheeks is mean to me, anyway.  He sees me
and turns around with his tail lifted, so his little butthole is
facing me.  I swear that's an insult in catese."

"Aw, Sugar Cheeks is a sweetie.  He wouldn't insult a fly."

"I'm pretty sure you've told me about him eating flies."

"Pfft.  You know what I mean."

"Anyway," Aurelia said, tugging open the door to Jenn's apartment
building, where they had been heading by unspoken agreement after the
terrible movie, "I don't want a cat.  I think I might be allergic, on
top of anything else."

"You're not allergic, you're just being a sourpuss now.  You've been to
my place hundreds of times, and the only time you sneeze is when you
have a cold or something."  Jenn unlocked her front door, and they went
in.  Jenn's apartment was similar in size and feel to Aurelia's: small,
with one bedroom, a small living room, and a small kitchen.  It had
that uncomfortable mugginess, although it wasn't as bad as Aurelia's in
that regard.  Jenn had a tiny deck (which had been eloquently described
as a "lanai" in the listing on Craigslist, but which turned out to be
about 15 square feet of concrete with a questionable wooden railing,
overlooking a scenic alleyway), with a sliding glass door and a matching
screen door that was shredded from Sugar Cheeks' attentions.

Sugar Cheeks sauntered up to Jenn and rubbed his cheek hard against her
shin in greeting.  As he did so, he turned such that his rear end was
facing Aurelia, with his tail lifted high.  Aurelia glared at his
little pink anus, then turned to go into the kitchen.

As Jenn sat down, Aurelia opened the fridge.  "What do you want?"

"What have I got?"

"PBR, and what are these, wine coolers?  When did you get wine coolers?"
Aurelia pulled out a bottle of light pink liquid and examined it
critically.  "And there's mixers.  Do you still have that vodka?"

"Yeah, should be above the sink," said Jenn from the other room.  There
was the faint, clattering sound of purring, and Aurelia imagined that
Jenn was scratching the cat's head.  She pulled down the vodka and
grabbed the container of orange juice.  Snagging a pair of glasses, she
went into the living room, where Jenn was sprawled on the couch, with
the cat aggressively butting his head against her face.

"You get vodka and orange juice."

"Sounds good, set me up."  Jenn set the cat down on the ground, and it
ran off on some mysterious feline errand.  Aurelia mixed two drinks and
handed one to Jenn.

"Here's to... what should we toast to?  Shitty movies?"

"Sure.  Here's to shitty movies," Aurelia raised her glass and clinked
it against Jenn's.  They both drank, Jenn with more gusto than Aurelia.
She set her glass down empty, while Aurelia's came away half full.
Aurelia sighed.

"Look, you can't start that up again.  The secret to being happy is to
be happy."

"How am I supposed to be happy when so much is going wrong?  I just...
I mean, Jason cheated on me after a year and a half.  What sort of
message is that supposed to send, you know?  Obviously I'm not good
enough."  She fought back against the wave of despair that was
threatening to break over her.

"Oh, quit it.  It doesn't mean a damn thing about you, and you know it.
He's the one with the problem."  Jenn set down her glass, and patted
the cushion next to her.  Aurelia sat, still looking down into her
glass.  "Aurelia."  Jenn grabbed her friend's chin, and lifted it up
until they were looking in each other's eyes.  "You are beautiful and
wonderful.  He doesn't deserve you, so good thing he took himself out
of the running, right?"  Jenn held her gaze until Aurelia's face
broke out into a faint smile.  "There we go.  Now cheer the fuck up.  I
can't be hanging around with goths, can I?"

Aurelia looked down again.  "I'm not trying to be all dramatic.  I'm
just having a really hard time with this.  I thought I was in love with
him.  I mean, I was in love with him.  I thought we were in love with
each other.  Did I mess up?  I can't tell.  I can't fix it if I don't
know how it broke."  She finished her drink, and poured herself another.
Jenn nodded at Aurelia's unasked question, and she filled the other
glass with orange juice and vodka as well.

Jenn looked thoughtfully into space.  "I don't think," she started,
"that you messed up.  Like I said, he's the one who went out and
cheated on you, so it's his problem, not yours.  Going around thinking
it's your problem is just victim mentality.  You're not a victim,
right?"

"No, I guess not."  Aurelia's voice was small, as if she wasn't too
certain.

"Let me put this a different way, so your stupid head can get it."  She
smiled.  "You are not a victim.  You're awesome.  He's a dick."

Aurelia smiled too.  "Thank you.  I'm sorry I'm being so dense about
all this.  It's... well, you know.  I'll stop talking about it."

"No, don't stop talking about it.  I just..." Jenn sighed theatrically.
"Don't take on the victim language, ok?  Bad things happened to you,
deal with it and move on."
Aurelia hesitated for a moment, taking in Jenn's words.  "Ok," she said
eventually, still thoughtful.  "No more victim language."  She offered
up her glass.  Jenn clinked with her, both faces serious, and they
drained the drinks.

"Ok," said Aurelia, pouring two fresh drinks.  "We're out of orange
juice, what else have you got."

Jenn dropped back against the sofa with an exagerated eye-roll and blew
her bangs out of her face.  "I don't know.  Go find out.  You know
where everything is."

"Ok," said Aurelia, standing a touch unsteadily.  "Mixers.  Fridge.
Check."  She tottered off to the kitchen.  Jenn kicked a magazine idly,
flipping it further onto the coffee table.  From the kitchen, Aurelia
called, "Looks like you've got... water.  No, wait, here's a diet Coke.
Ugh," she popped her head around the corner.  "I hate diet Coke.  Let's
go out."

"No, wait."  Jenn heaved herself out of warm embrace of the sofa, and
moved to the kitchen.  "Voila," she said, tugging open the freezer
door.  Two cannisters of concentrated juice gleamed frostily at them.
"Let's stay here."

Drinks freshly prepared -- Aurelia sipped her vodka-and-POG curiously,
and found it acceptable -- they returned to the living room.

"What were we talking about?"  Aurelia tried to look at her own nose,
and failed, which was funny enough that she started laughing.  This set
Jenn to laughing, and soon the both of them were red-faced from the
loud guffaws.  Finally, the laughter subsided, and Aurelia held up her
drink to the light.  "This tastes like Mexico," she declared with a bit
of a slur.

"Damn straight!" said Jenn, clinking glasses with Aurelia and taking a
healthy gulp of Mexico.  Aurelia sank back against the sofa and heaved
a huge sigh.

"Aurelia."  Jenn glanced over at her friend, then glanced away, eyes
low.

"Jenn."  Aurelia brushed Jenn's bangs out of her eyes, where they had
fallen again.  She took a sip, then said, "What's up."

"It was me."  Jenn's face flushed crimson.  She stared resolutely at
the ground.  Aurelia was confused.  "What was you?  What are you
talking about?"

"I didn't know how to tell you.  I'm so so sooo sorry.  I can't even...
It's been killing me.  I still don't..."  She closed her eyes, and
Aurelia was surprised to see tears flowing freely down Jenn's face.

"Jenn, I don't know what you're talking about."  Her voice was quiet,
and she stared uncomprehendingly at her best friend's face.  "You don't
have to be sorry about anything.  It's ok.  What is it?"

Jenn whispered one word: "Jason."

Chapter

The time must have been somewhere around 3 am.  Aurelia wasn't really
sure, and didn't care in any case.  The world melted around her, the
Seattle rain pounding as if it were trying to drown the whole city.
Aurelia was soaked through, but didn't care about that either.  A rare
thunderstorm was rolling over, and the clouds grumbled to each other,
not quite angry enough to develop a full thunderclap.  Her face would
have been soaked with tears, if it hadn't been washed clean by the
rain.

She wandered along a residential street, probably somewhere on Capitol
Hill, although she might have passed over into some other neighborhood
by now, she wasn't sure.  Three storey apartment buildings glistened
wetly in the sopping night air, their windows dark and shuttered, the
inhabitants warm and snug inside.

"Why am I here?" she said to no one.  She was surprised to find a
bottle in her left hand, and took an experimental swig.  It tasted
right.  She drank more.  "What am I doing here?  OH MY GOD, WHAT THE
FUCK!!" she shouted at the clouds.  They weren't listening, too intent
on their own squabbles.  She leaned up against a car, which made a
warning sound like R2D2 slightly concerned about his health.

The last few hours were more or less a blur.  She could remember, the
memory seared into her brain like fire.  Jenn had looked up, and said
again, "I'm so so sooo sorry.  Oh Aurelia."  Somehow, she was outside
Jenn's apartment, although she didn't remember leaving.  She didn't
know where the bottle had come from.  She didn't know how long she'd
been walking.  All the streets looked the same.  All the cars looked
the same.  All the buildings looked the same.  The streetlights snapped
and snarled at her, their glare hurting her eyes.  Her throat was sore.
She remembered screaming.  She remembered crying, but she was crying at
the moment too.

A black figure, huddled into itself against the rain, was moving along
the sidewalk.  She barely registered the moving shadow.  It slowed as
it neared Aurelia.  It had a weird outline, and Aurelia tried to focus
her eyes on it.  Some tiny part of her brain was shouting at her to
run, but the rest of her brain was concentrating too hard on things
like remaining upright and an endless loop of all the shit that had
gone wrong to listen.

The figure came closer.  It was really weird shaped.  Why was it so
weird shaped?  She couldn't understand what her eyes were telling her.
It walked right up to her, and an unnaturally white face appeared out
of a black mass that must have been some kind of clothing, although
Aurelia didn't have a clue what it was.  "What th' fuck do you want,
asshole?" She directed the words without venom, operating in a state
where pretty much anyone who wasn't her was an asshole.

"Aurelia?"  The lips were weird.  The eyes were weird.  What the hell
was this thing?  She didn't think it was human.

"What are you?  How d'you know who I am?"  She waved the bottle
vaguely.  An outside obvsever would have been confused whether she was
offering the odd figure a drink, or trying to hit it with the bottle.

"I am... that's not important right now.  You've been... chosen.  After
a fashion.  You chose yourself.  I have a gift for you.  Will you
accept it?"  The figure didn't move.  Aurelia was sufficiently drunk
that the increasing chorus of "RUN AWAY!" from the more sober parts of
her brain were still muted.  She blinked angrily, trying to blink away
the confusion and the rainwater.

A terrific thunderclap pealed overhead, with the sound of someone
tearing a sheet of tin in half through a sound system that would have
made the most hardened heavy metal rocker quiver in envy.  The lighting
flashed almost immediately afterward, and the whole world went white.
Aurelia's whole body tingled with the discharge, and she was vaguely
aware that a tree several yards away was swaying and smoking.  The rain
suddenly intensified.

Burned into her eyes by the flash was the purple image of a face which
might have started out human, but which had then received the mother of
all prosthetic treatments.  Long, drawn-out eyes with no recess at all.
A long, skinny nose that reminded her of a knife blade.  Thin, almost
non-existent lips over blood-red tongue and odd-looking teeth.
Skin glistening whitely in the light, beads of rainwater rolling down
it.  An ear, dramatically swept upward into a point, disappearing into
the hood of what she now saw was an elaborate black and brown robe with
patterns and detail work all over it.

"Will you accept it?" repeated the figure.  It shifted slightly, and
Aurelia saw that part of the reason it looked so strange was that it
had a promiminent hump behind each shoulder.

"What... what the fuck are you?"  Her brain seemed clearer after the
shock of the lighting strike.  A branch from the stricken tree fell
with a crash, and a car alarm sounded.  The thunder rumbled overhead,
clouds building up to another punch.

"I'm a... the word in English is 'fairy.'  I'm a Sidhe.  My name is
Domhnail," it sounded to her ears like "dongill" with the ng sound
swallowed so it was all one syllable.  "Will you accept my gift?"

"Fuuuuck," she said, low and long.  "So, you're a magical thingy that
doesn't exist and I've never seen lighting like that, and you want to
give me a present?"  She glanced over at the tree, which had stopped
smoking, but was leaning at a crazy angle over the street.

"Yes, will you accept it?"

"What is it?"

The creature extended a hand, or a claw, or something.  Aurelia wasn't
prepared to call anything with talons that long a hand.  It was also
bone white, and the fingers opened to show a ring in the callused palm.
The ring was plain gold, like a wedding band.  She picked it up,
entranced, and looked at the ring, rain dripping from it.  There was no
inscription she could see, and it didn't seem to have any detail to it.
Just a gold flattened torus.  It looked just the right size to fit her
ring finger.  She tried it on.  It was a ring.  She was expecting it to
be warm, or snug itself down on her finger or something.  But it just
sat there on her finger.

"So, you accept?"

"Yeah, I guess so.  Are we married now or something?"  The drunkenness
had been replaced with a childlike wonder as she looked at the ring,
halfway between admiration and wanting to fling it away into the
darkness.

The creature called Domhnail chuckled.  "No, we are not married.
You'll learn more later, but... now you can See."  She could hear the
capitol letter click into place as it said the word.  "The ring is...
there's not a word in English for it, but 'magic' is close.  It's Your
ring," again, the captialization was audible, "and no one can take it
from you unless you give it of your own free will."

"It's just a ring.  There's no tingling or anything..." her voice
trailed off, and Aurelia's face went slack as she stared into space.
She stood still for half a minute, the bottle crashing unheeded to the
pavement, no longer grasped by the slack hand.  Falling into herself
again with the shock of falling from a dream into alertness, Aurelia
looked up at the creature's face.  "Oh," she said, with a small voice.

"You can now See.  You will learn more later, but I don't know how.
The world will seem a new place, be careful."  It looked up at the sky,
its neck craning at an odd angle.  Stringy black hair was visible under
the hood.  "Now is my time to leave.  Goon rrah mah aggit, Aurelia."
The R was slightly rolled, and Aurelia thought it sounded like
gibberish.

Aurelia caught some clue from the creature's stance, and took a few
steps back.  The humps on its back moved and shifted, revealing
themselves to be enormous wings, membranous like a bat's wings, but
with a curious pattern of pink and grey just visible in the dim light.
It looked up, as if plotting the best path of flight.

With a sudden leap, it was in the air, huge wings flapping, and Aurelia
was knocked another step back, something crunching under her feet.  The
creature gained height rapidly, and was lost in the low clouds in
moments.

She looked down to see the remnants of her bottle sparkling underfoot.
On her hand, the ring resolutely failed to glow with a mysterious inner
light.

Chapter

"Mom.  Mom!  Calm down!"  Aurelia held the phone away from her ear,
looking at it in annoyance.  When the tirade had slowed, she put it
back up, and tried again.  "Look, just slow down, and listen, ok?  Let
me tell you what happened."  She waited again while her mother made
incoherent statements about rape and her baby and running around in the
dark like an idiot.

Finally, she petered out, and Aurelia tried again.  "Listen, just
listen to me, ok?  Ok."  She exhaled.  "I was not raped by anyone.
A... something, a fairy, found me after... Well, let's talk about that
later.  He found me.  I think it was a he.  I'm not sure.  Call it a
he.  He gave me a ring.  I feel like I'm in a fairy tale.  He didn't
touch me, I don't think.  I'd had a lot to drink.  No, I wasn't
hallucinating, I've got the ring, don't I?  No, I didn't buy it at a
pawn shop, why would I buy a wedding ring in a pawn shop?"  She sighed
disgustedly.  "I have not been on a week-long bender.  Mom.  Please.  I
got some bad news, and I got drunk.  It was one night.  I don't know
how I... Oh, he told me.  But yeah, that wasn't a person, mom.  Yes.
I'm sure.  He... What?  No.  He flew off.  Like, with wings.  No."  She
dropped her forehead to her hand, then ran her hand through her hair.
The dark mass slowly worked its way back down to where it had been.

"No, look.  Never... no, never mind.  Don't worry about it.  I just..."
She looked cross.  "No, mom.  No.  I don't want... I'm ok.  I'm fine!
Look..."  Another pause.  "I'm gonna go.  I'll talk to you later, ok?
I'm hanging up now.  Goodbye mom.  Goodbye!"  She tapped the screen and
cut off the call.  That had not gone as well as she'd hoped.  Telling
her mother about a nocturnal visitation from a magical, non-existant
creature was probably not an entirely wise move, but she didn't know
who else to talk to.

Jenn was... well, Jenn was not an option at the moment.  She wasn't
totally clear on what had happened before the fairy-thing had appeared,
but she was damn sure she was mad at Jenn about something, and she was
equally sure she didn't want to text her to find out what she should be
so mad about.  She could feel her mind slithering around the truth,
which was somehow locked up where she couldn't see it.

The world had been a very strange place since meeting the fairy a day
and a half ago.  She didn't have a lot of call to leave the apartment
these days, which was just as well, because what was outside was seriously
stretching her belief in her own sanity.  She had walked to Vita late
in the morning after The Night (it had already acquired its own
capitols in her mind), and could have sworn she heard a dog greet her
by name.  The barista had had long, pointy ears.  The naked branches of
a tree had swayed and bent toward her, although there was no wind.  No
one else took any notice.  It had seriously freaked her out, and she
had hurried back to her apartment and locked the door gratefully.

Her Facebook status update had been, "Weird night."  It had garnered
several comments about the thunderstorm, but no one else had had
visitations from strange creatures.  The oddness of it all was enough
that she'd almost entirely forgotten her misery over Jason.

Oh, Jason.  Aurelia's face went slack again, and her eyes focused on
something that was very far indeed from the little apartment she stood
in.

She was floating, disembodied, above a small domestic scene.  Despite
the fact that she must have been a dozen feet above the ceiling in the
room, she could see it as clearly as if the ceiling were glass, through
the insubstantial building materials.  A woman she'd never seen before
bent over a small child in a high-chair.  The woman had beautiful
chocolate-brown skin and a high, rounded forehead.  The child had
chubby cheeks, and was fussily refusing to eat something from a spoon
held by the woman.  She spoke in a language Aurelia couldn't understand,
obviously encouraging the child to eat.  The room was a kitchen, and
she could see the little stove tucked into one corner, its
porcelain-coated rounded corners looking like something from 50 or 100
years ago.

As she looked on, she saw the woman look up at a noise.  She set down
the spoon, and went to investigate.  Aurelia looked, but couldn't see
outside the room.  She tried to shift herself, but she seemed to be
fixed in space.  There was another noise, louder this time, followed by
a scream.  Frantic now, Aurelia scrabbled at herself, trying to do
anything to shift her view or move herself, but she stayed resolutely
immoveable.  A woman's voice was sobbing, then shrieked, and, suddenly,
was silent.  The baby started to cry, hesitant at first, then hugely, a
piercing, shrieking wail that filled Aurelia's ears until she thought
she would never hear anything again.

Just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.  She was standing in
her apartment.  It was late afternoon, and the sky was getting dark
outside her window.  Aurelia sat abruptly, dropping where she had
stood.  Suddenly, she was crying.  She was drowning in grief, and the
only way to stop drowning was to cry it out, letting the suffocation
and the burning and the anguish stream out from her.  When she opened
her tear-blurred eyes, she thought she could actually see a stream of
something flowing away from her in a chaotic, flowing pattern.  It was
purple and blue and angry-looking, like a bruise.  She shut her eyes
against the sight.

The grief subsided like a sped-up film of the tide going out.  It
washed out in little, quick ripples and subsided until it was no longer
threatening to overwhelm her.  Then it faded until she was only just
aware of it, then it was gone.  She opened her eyes again.  There was
no streaming purple or blue, and she thought maybe she'd just imagined
all that.  "I didn't just imagine that," she whispered to herself,
knowing that whatever had happened, it was real.

Chapter


Aurelia looked at herself in the mirror.  Not bad.  She had finally
showered and brushed her teeth and shaved, and was starting to feel a
little bit human.  She stole a glance at the ring, which was still on
her finger.  It was still just an old golden ring.  She thought about
selling it, but immediately knew that was not to be tolerated.  She
paused.  Did I just think the word "tolerated?" she thought to herself.
It was outside the scope of her daily vocabulary.  She moved her gaze
off the ring, and inspected her outfit: black jeans, a faded blue shirt
with a Butthole Surfers album cover on it, short jacket, and a knit
white shapeless hat.  She decided against the Chucks, and went for a
pair of black Mary Janes with ankle-length socks.

She exhaled deeply.  "You can do this, Aurey."  She stared at her own
reflection, wondering with repressed anxiety what weird thing she'd
see.

Mirrors had proven to be a bit of a problem since The Night.  Whatever
had happened to her, mirrors seemed to be a portal into the visions.
All she could think of was that hobbit movie, where the one hobbit had
put on the ring and gone into a sort of magical invisible universe.
But that wasn't happening, and there was no change if she took the ring
off.  It just meant she wasn't wearing the ring.  She was honestly a
bit disappointed that she'd had a stormy meeting with a mythical
creature (which was all starting to seem like a dream, evidence aside)
who gave her a magical ring, and the ring was so plain and boring.  It
didn't have any Elvish inscriptions, or glow, or anything.  It just sat
there.  If she took it off, she still saw weird stuff; she'd been
hoping that taking it off would make that go away, but no luck there.
If she left it off for more than an hour or two, she found herself
getting increasingly anxious until she put the ring back on, so she'd
decided to just leave it on.

The apartment was a mess.  Despite spending almost every waking minute
there for the last four days, she had been absolutely disregarding any
of her normal vague compulsion to clean -- she was always reminded of
how her mother had kept their apartment, when they had one.  That was
usually enough to guilt her into keeping her place cleaner, but the
strangeness of the last few days had overcome even that guilt.

The visions weren't too frequent now, and she was starting to develop a
taxonomy for them.  There were the full-body visions (as she thought of
them), where she seemed to be transported to some other place,
apparently to witness some event.  Those usually lasted at most a
minute or two, and were half the reason she didn't want to leave the
apartment: she was afraid she'd disappear into one while walking down
the street or something.  Another class of vision was the weird stuff
that was just attached to everyday things.  Like the barista with long
ears that first day, or the dog who said hi to her by name.  The
apartment seemed to be mostly free of those, but any time she looked
out the window, she could see things that weren't quite right.
Finally, there was other stuff, which she hadn't been able to pin down
as clearly.  She'd seen the blue and purple stuff -- it wasn't light
exactly, but it was what light would be if it didn't generate light,
which didn't make any sense, but she couldn't think of another way to
describe it -- one other time, and again it had been radiating from
her, when she'd been watching Amelie, and got to one of the parts that
reliably made her well up in tears regardless of her mood.  It was
almost like she was seeing the emotion somehow.

She looked back into the mirror and didn't see anything unusual.  She
half expected to see a war zone or a board room or a traffic accident,
but what she saw was herself, looking reasonably well put together.
She was getting ready to go meet Jenn, a thought which terrified her.

It was Friday, and she'd sent Jenn a message on Facebook in lieu of the
text message she normally would have sent.  She was conscious as she
did it that it was a weak sort of thing to do, but she couldn't face
the immediacy of a text message and the instant response it might have
garnered.  They'd arranged to meet at the Elysian, a large and noisy
bar and restaurant on the hill.  The arrangements had been crisp and
businesslike, with no mention of the unpleasantness.

Aurelia had remembered it all just before the vision of the chocolate
skinned woman, and when she returned, she had had almost a mini vision,
reliving the episode with Jenn.  She looked at her face in the mirror,
and stopped the memory before it replayed again, or tried to.  She set
her face against the emotion that threatened to well up again.

"Ok," she said to her mirror, "doing it.  Let's go meet Jenn."

Chapter

The Elysian was a large restaurant and brewpub at the east end of the
Pike/Pine section of Capitol Hill.  They actually had a large brewery
room that was visible through huge floor-to-ceiling windows adjacent to
the dining room, although Aurelia had never seen anyone working in
there.  She liked the Thunderhead IPA, which was satisfying in some way
she couldn't quite categorize.  It was brewed on site.

The walk there was an adventure all by itself.  People were out in
droves despite the low temperature and threat of rain which was a
constant of the Seattle winter.  Every person she passed, she noticed
something odd about them.  It wasn't always obvious, in fact it wasn't
usually obvious, but the oddities were all there.  This woman had a
bizarre halo of that same non-light hovering above her head.  Her 
companion had strangely long fingers.  The next man, with his beard,
chunky glasses and trucker cap would have been a stereotypical hipster
except for the fuzzy pink teddy bear swinging dreamily from his neck.
Glancing covertly at the other passersby, she didn't think they were
seeing any of this.

Passing cars kicked up clouds of spray which swirled into suggestive
shapes: a dog here; an anguished face there; a dead rose, hanging
upside-down.  Aurelia was far from used to it, but at least wasn't
shocked and horrified by all the strange things she now saw.  

The strangest thing she saw on her walk to the restaurant was a little
creature around a foot tall.  It was walking on elongated arms, and
levered tiny, dangling legs off the pavement with every arm-step.  Its
skin was faintly blue, and its head was utterly bald.  It looked like
an old man with a horribly disfigured body, but she could sense somehow
that it wasn't disfigured.  It grinned crookedly at her staring face,
and contrived to mime tipping a hat it didn't have.  "How d'ye do,
mum," it said, before arm-walking on.  Aurelia stood stock still at
this, and an inattentive pedestrian jostled into her, mumbling an
apology before walking around her, his gaze intent on a tiny glowing
screen in his hand.  The little gnome didn't seem to notice the stare.

She walked on, quicker now, suddenly dreading what would happen when
she got into the crowded restaurant.

The restaurant was indeed crowded, a thrum of conversation enlivening
the place.  It was like music to Aurelia's ears.  She hadn't realized
how much she missed just listening to human speech.  She stood at the
entrance, and drank it in for a moment, before looking for Jenn.

As she walked through the crowded space, she became aware that it
wasn't just human conversation she was hearing.  She spotted a couple
at the bar who were almost certainly elves: long, slender figures with
overlong pointy ears and delicate features that almost seemed to glow.
She'd never seen anything like them for refined delicacy.  No one else
seemed aware of the pair being unusual in any way.  They were wearing
normal clothes, and she wondered: did they look like normal humans to
everyone else?  They must.

She tore her eyes away from the must-be-elves, and looked around for
Jenn.  She skipped her gaze over a half-dozen other figures who didn't
look particularly human, trying hard not to think about it.  She
located Jenn in the lower section, sitting against the wall at a small
two-person table.  Jenn, to her immense relief, looked exactly like
Jenn.  She realized she'd been holding her breath, expecting Jenn to
turn out to be something not-human.

Aurelia sat down, a crazy mixture of emotions suddenly churning inside
her: the strangeness of her new vision; her apprehension and anxiety
over talking to Jenn; lingering sadness over what had happened with
Jason so long ago.  It was only a few weeks, but it felt like ages.

"Jenn," she said, before she had to stop.  Her face was a mixture
between a welcoming smile and a tearful frown.  She reached her hands
across the table, they grasped hands in silence for a minute.  Aurelia
tried to ignore that she could see more not-light flowing from both of
them, an odd yellowish color mixed in with blue.

"I'm so sorry," said Jenn, too quietly to be heard over the noise in
the room.  Aurelia had no problem understanding, though.

"I know," she said, and was surprised to find that she meant it.  She
didn't harbor any ill will toward her friend.  Her face must have
reflected some change, because Jenn leaned forward and said, "What are
you thinking?"

Aurelia leaned forward, and tried to frame a reply.  Eventually she
said, "I forgive you, Jenn.  I can't stay mad at you, you mean too much
to me.  I need you, now more than ever."

Jenn looked surprised.  "Really?"

"Really."

"I was expecting way worse than that.  I feel like shit.  When you ran
out like that... I thought I was never going to see you again.  I just
felt... I dunno, I felt like the lowest scum, you know?"  Jenn looked
down, and Aurelia saw a layer of orangey-yellow not-light filter from her
friend.

"I know.  I can tell, and in a way it doesn't matter.  I... we need to
talk, for real.  Can we go somewhere where it's quieter?"

Jenn looked around, and appeared to become aware of the noise.  "Oh
yeah.  Can we get some food first?  I'm starving.  I haven't had
anything to eat most of the day, I've been so nervous about this."

Aurelia looked around, trying to skip her gaze over the handful of
not-quite-human creatures that were in her direct sight.  "I guess so.
I should probably eat something.  I... things are weird right now, and
I really want to tell you about it, but I can't here."

"Ok... Should we go and get some pho take-out or something?  I kinda
had my heart set on a burger, and on my god I love the fries here."

"No, let's eat, then we can go."  Aurelia squeezed Jenn's hand, and
picked up the menu.  None of it looked like English for a moment, then
something clicked in her head, and it was all legible again.

Chapter

The night air was refreshing after the noise and strangeness of the
crowded restaurant.  Jenn and Aurelia walked side-by-side down the
sidewalk through the bustling night.  The Capitol Hill crowd was out in
force and Aurelia kept her gaze down so she wouldn't get too
distracted.

"I'm really surprised you're taking this whole thing so well," said
Jenn, waving her hand to encompass the both of them.

"Well, when you put it in perspective, it's not really that bad."
Aurelia glanced up into a face that was like a wolf's face on a human
head, and quickly looked down again as the figure passed by, tufts of
fur plainly visible from its coat sleeves, its gait odd as it walked
past on feet that wanted to rest only on its toes.

"You were really upset on Monday."

"Monday?"

"The day I... told you.  That was Monday."

"It was?"  Aurelia looked blankly Jenn's face, which was still showing
signs of apprehension under its usual calmness.  "Oh shit, I guess it
was.  Wow."

"Aurelia, what's going on?  You're acting really weird."

"On Monday, I guess... After I left your place, I must have gotten
really drunk, and I don't remember much until really late that night.
I was walking around somewhere, and there was a thunderstorm.  You
remember that?"

"I guess.  I think I was asleep.  I don't remember a lot after you
left, I must have gone to bed pretty soon after that."

"Well, trust me, there was a thunderstorm.  I was walking around, and I
don't know where I was, but I met a... someone.  Something."

"Some *thing*?  What, was there some creature from the black lagoon
wandering around Seattle in a thunderstorm?"  Jenn laughed at the
image.

"Sort of, yeah."  Aurelia looked at Jenn's face again.  She looked
thoughtfully back at Aurelia.

"You're not kidding, are you."

"No."

"Ok, keep going."

"So, I met a thing.  She called herself a fairy, but didn't seem female
to me.  She called herself a 'she,' which seemed weird.  Anyway, she
said I was chosen, or something like that, and asked if I wanted a
ring.  No, she asked if I wanted a present."

"Is that the ring on your hand?"

"Yeah.  So eventually I said yes, and she gave me this ring.  She said
it was Mine, and that now I could See.  She said something in some
foreign language, then stretched out these wings that must have been as
wide as the whole street, and leapt into the air.  Oh my god, that
sounds so crazy.  Am I crazy?  It would explain a lot."  Aurelia looked
up at Jenn apprehensively.

"I dunno, that does sound pretty crazy.  Fairies are supposed to be
little twinkly things like Tinkerbell, right?  Anyway, they're not
real, they're stories told by ignorant peasants to explain the seasons
and things, right?  Not like vampires," Jenn had a fascination with the
Twilight books, which Aurelia did not share.

"I don't know, I don't know anything about fairies.  If this was really
a fairy, it didn't look a thing like Tinkerbell.  It was like something
from a dream.  Anyway.... She, it, whatever, it jumped up, flew into
the storm, and disappeared.  I would forget about the whole thing as a
drunk hallucination, but... I have this ring."  Her voice went small,
and she held up her left hand, where the ring sat, fitting perfectly,
and looking exactly like a perfectly normal gold ring.

"Oh," said Aurelia, remembering something else from the encounter.
"She said no one could take the ring from me if I didn't want them to.
What happens if you take it?"

"I don't want to take it.  What if it's a magic ring that turns you
into a frog or something?  I don't want to turn into a frog.  That
always happens in fairy tales.  Gross."  Jenn worked her face, trying
to come up with an adequate expression of her distaste for the idea of
becoming a frog.

They passed silently up the stairs to Jenn's apartment, where they'd
headed as if by unspoken agreement.  "You want anything?" asked Jenn as
they walked in the front door to the apartment.

"No, I think I'm done drinking for a little while," said Aurelia.
"Although, yeah, I'll have some water."

"Yeah," said Jenn, disappearing into the kitchen long enough to draw
two glasses of water and bring them into the living room, where both
women flopped down on the couch.

"So, I haven't told you the weirdest part yet," said Aurelia, staring
into her glass.

"Wait, meeting a fairy who gave you a magic ring isn't the weirdest
part?"

"No.  I... This is why I think I might be going crazy.  I see all kinds
of weird things now.  Like, back at the bar, I *saw* your emotion.  It
was a kind of orange-yellow color, and it was like light that doesn't
shine any light, or something.  I have no idea how to describe it.
There were a bunch of... well, people I guess, who weren't people.
Like, they were vampires or elves or werewolves or something.  On, I
guess it was Tuesday, I went out to get coffee, and a dog said hi to me
and said my name.  And the worst one, I kind of leave my body, and I
don't know where I go, but I see these things that happen."

"Things?  Like what?"  Jenn had been silent through most of this, but
was clearly bursting with questions she wanted to ask.

"Events, like people in far away places, doing things.  They talk, they
hit each other, they do nothing.  
It's like... there's no pattern I can tell.  I can't remember what
half of them were any more, but I was expecting that if some fairy was
going to give me visions, they'd be important, or meaningful, or
something.  These are just... scenes.  Just life, happening."

"Have you seen anybody having sex?"  Jenn's face was mischevious.

"What?  No.  I don't... this is really weird, Jenn.  I'm not really
ready to joke about it yet."

"Ok, sorry."  Jenn didn't look particularly remorseful, but she did
refrain from making any more comments like that.

"And so like mirrors are totally hit or miss now.  I never know if I'll
see myself, or something else.  I think when I'm seeing other things,
I'm looking out of other people's mirrors somehow.  And I see weird
things on people, like normal people, but they have these things I can
see on them.  There was a guy on the way to the restaurant, he had a
big pink teddy bear around his neck.  No one else noticed, so I don't
think that was just some new hipster trend."

"There's nothing very magical about a teddy bear."

"No, but it was... it wasn't moving right, like it didn't move with
him, you know?  It was kind of floating.  And there's other stuff.  I
saw a little thing, like a little old guy, but a foot tall, and with
little stubby legs, so he was walking on his arms."

"It was probably a monkey.  They walk on their arms."

"No, it wasn't a monkey.  I'm sure it wasn't a monkey.  Monkeys don't
talk.  It... he, he asked me how I was doing.  He had a little tiny
tweed suit on, like, you remember Professor Stuart, who taught that
classic lit class we took?  He was dressed like that."

Jenn looked thoughtful, and Aurelia found herself anxiously awaiting
whatever Jenn was about to say.  "I'm crazy, aren't I."

"Uh, no.  No, I mean, you don't seem crazy.  You seem like Aurey, but
worried, and of course talking about stuff that a lot of people would
call crazy.  Maybe don't tell anyone else about this yet, until you
figure out what's going on."

"How am I supposed to figure out what's going on?  There aren't even
words for what's happening, I don't think.  There's no word for visible
emotion, or little guys with blue skin."

"I dunno, isn't that just an aura?"

"What, like that crazy tarot stuff?"  Aurelia looked thoughtful
herself.  "I... suppose.  But no, an aura's supposed to be like light
that surrounds someone, right?  This is stuff that flows out from
someone.  And it's not light, it's like... maybe smoke or something,
but it moves like light."

"Light doesn't move."

"Sure it does, it's got a speed, right?  The speed of light?"

"Oh, well, I guess if you want to think of it like that."

Aurelia half-chuckled, then continued.  "Anyway, it's not like anything
I've ever seen before.  You were doing it at the bar."

"What, I was?"  Jenn looked alarmed, as if she'd been caught picking
her nose in public.

"I was too.  Don't worry about it.  It's not a bad thing, it just seems
to be something that happens.  I saw a guy as we were walking, he was
trailing a stream of the stuff that was a color that hurt my eyes, and
I have never seen it before.  I think it's actual emotion I'm seeing.
I wonder what he was being emotional about."

"Maybe he just broke up with his girlfriend," said Jenn, pausing the
instant the words were out of her mouth, and looking apprehensively at
Aurelia.  "Shit, sorry," she said, with a small voice.

Aurelia waved her hand, as if brushing something away from her face.
"Whatever.  He broke up with me.  Or I guess I broke up with him.  I
don't care any more.  I mean, I do, but... this is more important right
now.  It's like being worried your breath smells as your car is
crashing."

"I get it.  This is really weird stuff, Aurelia.  What are you going
to do?"

"I dunno, live with it, I guess.  I wish I knew more what was
happening.  I don't know what I'm seeing.  Or Seeing," Jenn could hear
the capitol S, which surprised her.

"We should try to figure out what happened to you.  I bet the internet
knows."

Aurelia looked skeptically at her friend, and had a momentary guilty
blonde joke run through her head.  "I don't think the internet is going
to give us reliable information about fairies and visions and auras."

"You never know."  Jenn got up and retrieved her laptop, which she only
used when she needed to either type a lot, or see things on a bigger
screen than that on her phone.  She grinned at Aurelia.  "Let Dr.
Google handle it."

Aurelia smiled a worried smile, but shifted to sit next to Jenn, and
watched as she started typing.  The screen brought up a host of images
of fantastic-looking fairy pictures, most of which seemed to be
modelled on impossibly attractive women wearing very little clothing.
Aurelia couldn't restrain a derisive, "Hah!" when she saw the pictures.

"Give it a minute," said Jenn.  She clicked on a few articles, and
skimmed the text.  Aurelia found her attention wandering, not expecting
to hear anything too enlightening from the vast collection of random
that was the internet.  "Huh," murmured Jenn, occasionally making
interested noises.

Aurelia looked back at the screen.  "What are you seeing?"

"Oh, sorry.  I got distracted by some Twilight fanfic.  It's not very
good."

"If you're going to surf fan fiction, I'll just go, ok?"  Aurelia's
attempt at humor sounded flat even to her.  "Sorry, you're trying to
help.  I shouldn't say things like that."

"Whatever, it's fine.  Here's something.  Oh, no, it's about UFOs.  I
mean, I guess your fairy was a sort of UFO, right, it was flying?
Wait, here you go.  Here's a guy who talks about fairies.  Read through
this."  Jenn handed the laptop to Aurelia, who took it and read.

She didn't respond for a minute, then shook her head.  "This doesn't
make any sense.  We're not in Scotland or Ireland, and there are no
mounds around here, unless you count whole hills or something.  That
doesn't seem right.  He is right that fairies can be kind of horrible,
though.  I can see why you'd leave out saucers of milk, if it meant
fairies wouldn't come mess up your house."

Jenn took the computer back.  "People of the mounds.  Sounds halfway
between poetic and dirty."  She smiled slyly at Aurelia.

"No it doesn't," said Aurelia, unable to repress a smirk.  "Come on.  I'm
trying to be serious here.  Wait... What's that?"

"Second sight."  Jenn handed the computer to Aurelia.  "Looks like that
might be your visions."

"Yeah."  Aurelia read the article, then re-read it.  "This is... sort
of right.  I'm seeing more than this, though.  They just describe the
full-body visions.  There's no mention of the weird daily stuff, or the
not-light emotion stuff."

"Well, they are writing about a mythical magical power that's never
existed, and only appears in fairy tales."  The smirk in Jenn's voice
was barely restrained.  "I bet those fairy tales aren't completely 100%
accurate.  Since they're about something that's not real."

"Only it's real to me.  It's happening to me."  Aurelia briefly
considered updating the Wikipedia article, but decided that was
probably premature, and possibly a terrible idea.  "I'm living it," she
said to herself.  Back aloud, she turned to Jenn and said, "I wonder if
this really is Second Sight."

"What does it matter if it is or isn't?  You're seeing stuff.  You can
call it whatever you want to."

"I just mean, if it is... Maybe I can find out more about it."  Aurelia
had hated doing research in school, but suddenly it had a substantial
appeal.  "There was that section in one of the libraries at UW that was
about mythology, right?"

"I dunno," said Jenn.  "I don't think I ever went in the library there."

"Yes you did, don't you remember we spent all that time looking up
stuff on Dickens?"

"Oh... I guess.  Kind of.  Anyway.  You want to check in with the nerds
at the library?  Seems like a musty way to do things when you can look
stuff up online."

"Sort of.  This article is interesting, but there's gotta be more
written about this stuff.  It seems like it's worth a try.  You wanna
come with me?"  Aurelia closed the computer and handed it back to Jenn.

"What, right now?"  Jenn looked at her phone, which showed the time as
nearly 10 pm.

"No, not right now.  But when I go.  Do you want to join, or are you
going to stay here and fondle your cat, or whatever it is you do when
I'm not here.  Hey, where is Sugar Cheeks anyway?"

"He's here somewhere.  Probabaly sleeping on top of something warm.  He
does that a lot, especially any clean laundry straight from the dryer."
She made a sour face at this, as if it were in some way unexpected that
a cat should seek out clean, warm laundry as an ideal bed.

"Hah," said Aurelia.  She sat back, and stared up at the ceiling for a
moment.

Jenn glanced sharply at her, and said, "Are you having a vision?"

"What?  No.  No, I was just looking at... nothing.  Into space.  Sorry,
just thinking."

"That'll give you wrinkles and grey hair, you know."  Jenn jabbed
Aurelia gently in the ribs.  "What are you thinking about."

"I'm not sure yet."

Chapter

It was cold, so cold.  The cold of the earth permeated all through.
The cold of the ages.  She had been asleep for a long time.  A very
long time.  The cold had penetrated her bones until she was no longer
exactly alive, and hadn't been for millenia.

Her clothes were in tatters, so much worm food.  Her burial place
contained a few small artifacts from her life, when she had been fully
alive.  A bowl, elaborately carved from wood.  A broom made from
heather.  A cooking pot, fire-blackened and beaten from copper.

She had been asleep for so long.  Coming from the depths of sleep was
like swimming up from the utter, abyssal depths of the ocean, coming
through the cold into warmer water, light slowly returning to her mind,
slowly and creakily returning to the world of the living.

With a dusty sigh, An Cailleach Seann de na Tuatha awoke.

Chapter

The Suzzallo library at the University of Washington was an imposing
gothic stone structure, home to the general reference section, where
Aurelia decided to start her search.  Its elaborate stone arches facing
on to Red Square forbiddingly.  Aurelia was pleased to find that she
wasn't completely lost on campus even after a few years, and settled
herself down at a catalog terminal.


She typed in, "Second sight," and examined the results.  That didn't
seem too successful, so she tried a few other terms, and eventually
located the correct section of the library to be looking in.  She wrote
down the Dewey Decimal number, and traipsed off, looking up at the
imposing stacks.

It had been a couple years since she'd been in a library.  Her
Philosophy work had involved a lot of reading, but most of what she
read was in second-hand textbooks she'd needed to purchase.  She'd
certainly borrowed some of the books she wanted or needed to read for
class, but the underlying assumption that one would own one's textbooks
was strong, and she'd accepted it without thinking too hard.  Her
student loans would doubtless last another extra month or three because
of it.

She located the section, and started looking over book spines, looking
for likely titles.  No books seemed to be about second sight, though,
and after five minutes of looking, she gave up and went in search of a
librarian.

She leaned over the reference librarian's desk, and said quietly, "Can
you help me?  I'm looking for books on second sight."

"In mythology, or modern usage?"

"There's a modern usage?"

The librarian smiled a tight smile, and said, "There are numerous
modern mystical texts which discuss the topic.  It's a popular subject
in some circles."

"Oh.  Uh...  I guess both.  I'm not sure yet."

"What are you researching for?  Is this for a mythology class, or a
literature class, or what?"  The librarian, who was exactly the sort of
skinny, tight-skinned, severe looking woman Central Casting would have
sent over if you called them up asking for librarians, dropped her
reading glasses onto their chain, and stood up from behind the desk.
"Regardless, let's go take a look."

She led Aurelia back to the same section she'd just been in, and
started pointing out books.  "This one will contain something... This
one, no, probably not.  This one, oh this one would be good; definitely
look in this one," she pulled a thick volume off the shelf and dropped
it into Aurelia's hands.  They went over several shelves, and by the
end, she had a stack of five "almost certainly" books and ten more
"probably" books.  She thanked the librarian, and took her haul to one
of the little enclosed study desks to start looking them over.

After half an hour of perusing books, she had found numerous glancing
descriptions, but nothing that really went into any detail.  She was
getting a much clearer idea of the mythology around second sight,
though.

Second sight was a phenomenon reported in Irish and Scottish fairy
tales and stories, and was typically associated with witches and wise
women.  There was practically no mention of men having second sight.
None of the references she found talked about a fairy granting it,
either.  It just seemed to be inborn, anywhere the books mentioned its
source at all.  There was a corresponding lack of magical rings
associated with second sight, although magical rings in general seemed
to be a common enough theme.  The women who had the gift were usually
seen as weird oracles, and rarely received a mention beyond their
second sight.  

The main exception to that was Morgana Le Fay in the Arthurian legends,
which Aurelia was surprised to find were actually Welsh more than they
were English.  She'd always thought of Arthur as the king of England.
Even Morgana Le Fay only seemed to have the power of second sight in some
of the references, with most concentrating on her diabolical schemes
against Arthur, sometimes involving magic powers that varied depending
on which story or reference she looked at.

After an hour, she sat back and looked at the stack of books, frowning.
She knew a lot more about mythology, particularly of the Celtic lands
of Britain, but didn't feel like she knew much more about second sight.
She dropped the stack of books into the book return after writing down
their names on a small piece of note paper stacked conveninently next
to a basket full of tiny pencils.

Frown still on her face, she walked slowly back to the area where she
and the librarian had made their selections.  She'd said they should
avoid the modern books, but maybe that was a mistake.  Aurelia
instinctively felt that new-age books about second sight were going to
be a lot less useful than older references, but maybe that was wrong.
Maybe this was a more common thing than she thought, and modern writers
might have some real insight into it.  She stood, looking thoughtfully
at the shelves.

"What are you looking for?"

Aurelia looked up to see the shy face of a young undergrad who looked
like he couldn't have been more than a year out of high school, if even
that.  He had heavy glasses, and his hair had a tousled look that spoke
to inattention far more than it did to any current fashion trends.  His
mode of dress, similiarly, put her in mind of ineptitude rather than
fashion.

"Oh, nothing, sorry.  Am I in your way?"  She moved to let him past,
but he didn't move.

Instead, he cracked a nervous grin, and said, "No, I.... I'm sorry, I
overheard you earlier, talking to Sally about second sight."  She felt
a flush of repulsion, having been approached on more than one occasion
by creepy guys who offered to help her with something, but had been
much more interested in helping themselves to inexpert gropes and weird
come-ons that might have come from the least worldly self-help book
ever on picking up girls.  She looked around, but no one was looking at
them.  She considered escape routes, but figured he wouldn't try
anything in the quiet confines of the library stacks.

"I... That's true.  I'm looking for books on second sight.  Why do you
ask?"  She was going through the motions.  He looked like a first-class
inexpert groper.  She edged slowly toward the gap in the shelves that
led back to the safety of the reference desk.

"Oh, I wanted... that is, I thought.... Um."  He flushed bright red,
all the way up to the roots of his hair.  She abruptly became aware of
a roiling flow of blue-green not-light, chaotic shifting patches of
color running through it in clouds, coiling around her like snakes
made of smoke.  The tendrils emanated from the young man's chest, to the
extent she could determine any source.  She blinked and bit back a cry
of surprise.  As abruptly as she became aware of the tendrils, she
realized that up til now, she hadn't seen anything odd in the last
few hours.

She wondered if she was jumping to judgement too quickly.  She had no idea
what the not-light meant, but she suspected it was his embarrassment.
He recovered himself a bit, and croaked out, "I thought you might want
to look at this one," grabbing a book off the shelf and handing it
to her.  Abruptly and stiffly, he turned on his heel and stalked off
in the opposite direction, his wild hair flopping as he moved, like a
real-life muppet.  The emanations of not-light stretched and thinned,
until they faded out, following him around the corner of the shelves.

She looked down at the book in her hands.  "Mythical Powers of Celtic
Fairy Folk" with the subtitle, "A Comprehensive Examination,
From the Tuatha De Danaan Through the Arthurian Legends."  She turned
it over, but the old brown leather cover had no further clues to
impart, other than the main title imprinted in gold foil down the spine.

Aurelia looked back up after the young man, and jumped to the end of
the aisle.  She looked to the left, where he had walked, but there was
no sign of him.  He had disappeared.

Chapter

Aurelia walked quickly back to the reference desk, book in hand.  She
looked around, feeling oddly frantic to find the kid with the blue-green
not-light trailing after him.  She said to the reference librarian,
"Have you seen a guy walk by with blue-green..." She stopped herself,
tracked back over what she had just said, and finished, "hair?  Maybe
some other color, but kind of wild.  He had thick glasses."

The librarian frowned to herself.  "No, I haven't seen anyone with dyed
hair recently.  There was that young woman an hour or two ago..."

"He may not have had dyed hair.  But he had thick glasses with sort of
brown plastic frames."

"Oh, you mean Stuart?"  She smiled, evidently fond of Stuart.  "He
walked out a moment ago.  Do you need to speak to him?  He's in here
most days, I can take a message for him if you like."  She leaned in
conspiratorialy.  "He's quite shy, it took me months to discover his
name, and he has been here nearly every day since the quarter started."

"Yeah, I think I know that," said Aurelia, looking at the door.  She
came back to herself with a little shake of her head, and said, "He
recommended this book," and she held out Mythical Powers, and the
librarian examined it.  "Oh," she said, looking up over her glasses,
"Are you doing a paper on fairies?  You should have said, we have an
excellent selection..."

"No," said Aurelia absently, looking back at the door.  "Thank you."

Chapter

Aurelia spent some time going over the book when she got home.  She was
a little surprised to find that her alumni card had let her check the
book out, and had spent the bus ride home nervously fingering the
leather spine.  It was nestled in her purse between phone and wallet.
It was actually a rather slim volume, only 150 pages, and she realized
upon opening it that it was a doctoral thesis written by a UW student
some 70 years ago.  She knew in a sort of abstract way that theses were
published, but had never considered she might run across one in
the library.

Suddenly aware of her vision again, the bus ride home had been an
adventure in identifying what was real to everyone else, and what was
real to her.  There were no non-humans she spotted, but there was a
raggedy-looking guy who had an impressive number of pint-size objects
orbiting his head, including a horse, several different guns, an
airplane, two or three tiny women, and a number of things she couldn't
identify.  She tried not to stare in fascination as the orbiting
objects passed through his chest unimpeded, only to emerge on the other
side and continue their orbit.  He didn't seem to be any more aware of
them than the rest of the passengers.

Now that she was looking through the book, she was fascinated by what
she found.  Fairies were variously dead souls, fallen angels who hadn't
fallen as far as hell, redefined pagan gods, and a number of other
things.  They were magical, able to change their appearance more or
less at will.  They came in many different shapes and sizes.  Their
magic seemed to be centered around the ability to fool the senses, such
as with fairy gold that turned into smoke or worthless leaves in the
morning light.  The opening chapter detailed all this, and subsequent
chapters went in depth into the different magical powers, tricks,
deceptions and malicious actions fairies would perform.

Although it was all interesting stuff, Aurelia was surprised that there
was no mention of fairies giving humans supernatural powers (although
they gave humans lots of other things), and there wasn't any talk of
the fairies of old having wings -- that had been a Victorian invention.
According to the author, most fairies flew simply by magic, or by
riding on the back of birds, or certain kinds of sticks.  There was no
mention of second sight or visions in the book.  Aurelia wondered why
Stuart had recommended it to her, knowing that she was looking for
information on second sight.

As she was pondering, her phone twittered at her, and she checked her
messages.  Jenn had sent her a message: "crap got a job guess i cant
slak any mor"  Aurelia sent back: "What job?"  The reply came, "workin
at fancy club dntn serving drinks or some shit"  "Congrats," replied
Aurelia.  She looked at the book again, and decided that she did want
to meet with Stuart again, to ask him why he'd made the recommendation.

Chapter

Aurelia concentrated, her face screwed up, as if physical exertion
could bring about mental exertion.  She was trying to will herself to
stop seeing a set of extraordinary wings that were bobbling comically
above the back of a golden retriever that was bounding around, chasing
tennis balls.  She sat on the edge of a dog park, where a half-dozen
dogs ran around doing doggy things while their owners variously looked
on, chatted, or actively played among the treacherous piles of
droppings inconsiderate dog owners had left lying around.

She had thought back to the time in the library, when she hadn't seen
anything like a supernatural vision for several hours.  Somehow, she
thought, she'd been able to turn off the visions, but any time she
started thinking along these lines, the visions became incredibly
tenacious, refusing to be dispelled by anything she tried.  As soon as
she tried to not see them, she was hyper-aware of every extraneous
appendage, trailing stream of not-light, and non-human figure on the
street.

As she concentrated, the dog bobbled by, snapping the bright yellow
ball from the ground, its aethereal wings waving absurdly over its
body.  Her vision was suddenly arrested by the sight of a figure
walking along the sidewalk across the park.  As she focused, she
realized she was looking at the fairy who had given her the ring, or
someone who looked very much like him/her.  Oversize wings were folded
against its body, and the being walked with an odd gait.

She was paralyzed with indecision.  Should she approach it?  Could
anyone else even see it?  There was no one else walking in that stretch
of sidewalk, so it was impossible to judge.  What would happen?  What
would she say?  The creature had seemed friendly in its way (although
she was the first to admit she wasn't really in a good frame of mind to
judge at the time), although it had also seemed foreboding, and full of
repressed menace.

Her reading in the book about fairy powers hadn't helped.  If fairies
could look like anything they want to, and this one chose to look like
it did -- in full daylight, she could see that its face was alien, sort
of like a cross between a cartoon drawing of a grey-skinned, big-eyed
extra-terrestrial and an owl, except the eyes were odd and shaped
wrong -- what did that say about it?  The wings were huge and batlike,
and she could see the grey and pink patterning as it moved up the
sidewalk.

What would be the point of talking to it?  Did she hope to learn more
about what was going on?  What if this was a different fairy, and she
just couldn't tell them apart?

In her indecision, she let the fairy walk past and out of sight.
Although chasing after it wasn't out of the question, she flashed back
to the claws that had handed over the ring to her, and decided perhaps
she didn't want to surprise such a well-armed being.  She rubbed the
ring unconsciously, and it resolutely failed to respond.

Chapter

[continue with an cailleag seann]
Deep in her musty darkness, An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha breathed.
If she had been of such a mind, the darkness was oppressive, but in her
current state, the darkness was merely her existence.  She had not
known light for millenia, and wouldn't know what to do with it if she
had it.

She lay on her bier, feeling, with the slowness of eternal time,
herself wake up from her deep slumber.  Here an organ, there a limb,
slowly, slowly, she came back to herself.  Breath rasped over dry,
cracked lips for the first time in aeons.  Dust, unseen, swirled
between jagged blackened teeth.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, she sneezed mightily.  Around her, objects
scattered and scuttled away from the blast.  The torn fragments of her
mouldering clothing flapped and fluttered in the sudden wind.  Vocal
cords, so long disused they might have fossilized in the intervening
time, creaked into movement and vibration.  She uttered, after careful
consideration, and with considerable feeling, "Faigh muin!"  The words
could not be doubted, in any language, but to express the foulest
expletive possible.

She tried to lift her head, but gave up the effort, and waited.  If
there was one thing she was capable of, it was patience.  She had
waited, after all, these many years for the re-emergence of a Seer
among the humans.  It had been a long time coming, and if she had been
awake, she would have despaired for the poor humans.  To go so long
without guidance... well, she very nearly cackled at the thought.  If
her body had been more alive, the cackle would have croaked out from
dusty, cracked lungs and turned any listener to stone with fear.

Deep under the earth, in profound darkness, An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha
waited, feeling with a tenderness she hadn't expected, the presence of
the Seer.

Chapter

Aurelia looked up at the oddly archaic-looking stone face of the
building Jenn was standing in front of.  Jenn gestured up to a window.
"Here's where I work," she said, smiling oddly.  She was wearing her
server's uniform, a surprisingly severe black dress that cinched
tightly about the waist with a faux-corset design.  On Jenn, it
highlighted her ample bosom, and Aurelia was put vaguely in mind of the
dirndls worn by the beer servers she'd seen in Oktoberfest photos.

"What is this place?"  Aurelia examined the frontage to the building,
and finally spotted a miniscule, well-weathered brass plaque: Rainier
Club.  Underneath, in smaller letters, "Members only."  "What's the
Rainier Club?"

"I guess it's where all the rich guys in Seattle hang out.  Seriously,
I've seen Bill Gates, the mayor is here, that guy who's developing all
the property along Lake Union, and a bunch of old guys I've never heard
of, but goddamn they dress fancy.  It's like tuxedo day every day in
there.  I come out smelling like fucking cigar smoke every night.  But
it pays good, and I don't actually have to work very hard.  All the
servers are pretty girls, and I think half of them may be sleeping with
rich dudes."

"Ugh, don't do that," said Aurelia, shuddering.

"Nah, those guys are gross.  I don't need money that badly, they pay me
here, and pretty well.  I'm surprised I got the job, I'm totally ugly
next to some of those girls."

Aurelia looked at her friend, with her naturally blonde, arrow-straight
hair, hourglass figure, well-proportioned face, full lips and beautiful
blue eyes.  "I think you're in the league.  They wouldn't have hired
you otherwise, right?"

"Aw, thanks Aurey."  Jenn exuded a brief burst of warm-pink not-light
that Aurelia tried to not look too hard at.  She gathered her friend in
an embrace.  "I love you."

"I know, I love you too," said Aurelia, meaning it, but distracted all
the same.  Something made her distrust this place.  "I can't come in,
can I."  It was a statement.

"No, I'd get fired so fast.  They have really strict policies about who
gets to come in.  I dunno why it's so hush-hush, it's just a bunch of
guys sitting around and drinking or eating or smoking.  They don't even
talk about anything interesting, just blah blah stock prices or
whatever."

"Ok, well, thanks for having lunch with me," said Aurelia, tearing her
gaze from the building to look back at Jenn.  "I still can't get over
what they make you wear.  That's amazing."

Jenn twirled as if showing off a prom gown or a bridesmaid's outfit.
"I wouldn't buy one, that's for sure, but it's kind of cool wearing a
long dress like this.  It's a change."  Jenn smoothed down her hair,
then smoothed the front of the dress.  "Do I look ok?"

"You look great," Aurelia swept her gaze up and down Jenn's figure,
suddenly envious of her friend's good looks in a way she hadn't been
since their first meeting.  "Have a good day.  Don't sleep with any
rich old guys, but if you spot any cute young ones, point 'em my way."
Aurelia smiled, and realized it was the first time she'd made a dating
joke since the breakup with Jason.  It didn't hurt to think about any
more, but she had a sense that this was more to do with a modified
perspective since The Night (which had, itself, lost some of its
prominence in her memory) than because she was healing quickly.  It had
been a month, but she wasn't sure how long it should take to get over
your boyfriend cheating on you with your best friend after your first
serious relationship.  She suspected a month was a short period of
time.

As she walked back up toward the library, which was her excuse for
coming downtown, Aurelia reflected on the fact of Jason's infidelity
with Jenn.  She said to herself that it didn't hurt, but somewhere
below her conscious mind, there was still an accretion of pain and hurt
that she was actively trying to ignore.

Chapter

Aurelia stood at a door.  She didn't see much about it, it was just a
door, and she knew she needed to open it.  She did, turning the handle,
and pulling it toward her.  On the other side of the door stood her
mother.

"What are you doing here," she said to her mom, a surprised statement
more than a question.

"Keep going," said her mom, gesturing at a door next to her.

Aurelia opened the next door, and found herself facing a room,
elaborately furnished, with rich carpets, overstuffed furniture, a
large fireplace, and framed, painted portraits on the walls.  She
walked into the room.  A set of gas lamps burned on the walls, and
there was a door in the opposite wall.  She looked up at the portraits.

Every portrait was of a woman, all wearing old-time clothes.  No, she
realized, she could tell when they were from -- that one was around the
mid 1800s.  That one was from a few decades earlier.  The newest one
she could see was from around 1900, and the oldest was around 1800.  As
she had expected, the portraits were moving slightly, looking at her with
mixed expressions, ranging from curiosity to boredom to disdain.  The
most old-fashioned woman beckoned to her.  She walked toward the painting,
and saw that there was a brass placard next to it: "Mabel McLeod, 
1786 -    ".  There was no date of death listed.  She looked up at the
face, which was kindly, perhaps 40 or 50, hovering above a white lace 
collar on a black blouse.

"Keep going," said Mabel, with an accent Aurelia couldn't identify.
She looked at the door, her movements smeared in oil paint, and she
raised an elegant hand to point.  Aurelia looked at the door, which had
a spindly-looking handle, and was made of some dark wood with a series
of concentric panels inlaid into its surface.  She turned the handle,
which moved haltingly.  The heavy door swung toward her, and she stepped
through.

She was now in a dark, low-ceilinged room with a coarse wooden floor.
There was a fire burning in a central pit, which was ringed with
stones.  A black cauldron was suspended over the fire on a black iron
stand, and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom (she thought to herself,
why do my eyes have to adjust in a dream?), she saw that there was a
figure stooping over the cauldron, slowly stirring it with a long
implement of some kind.

Aurelia cautiously leaned over the pot and inhaled.  An odd aroma
assaulted her nose.  "What is it?" she asked of the figure.  It
appeared not to hear.  She looked into the pot, but it was just
blackness against the blaze of the fire.  She leaned back as smoke got
in her eyes.  The figure looked up, and Aurelia saw it was an old woman
with long scraggly grey hair, dressed in a simple dark colored dress.
This time she didn't have any sense of what time period she was looking
at.  In the dancing firelight, she caught a glimpse of color on the
dress, and was unsurprised to see a plaid pattern.

Finally the old woman looked at her, and said what sounded like, "Fallav
an shin."  She pointed at an opening Aurelia hadn't noticed before.
She realized she had understood the meaning behind the words, if not
the language itself: go there.  Keep going.  With a second glance at
the odd-smelling cauldron, Aurelia moved to the opening and through.

She was outside now, standing on a kind of scrubby ground.  Overhead,
the sun was either just setting or just rising over rapidly moving
clouds which scudded along close enough to touch.  The land was made of
rolling hills covered in scrub, and in the middle distance, Aurelia
could see a small hut with a straw roof and very short stone walls.
Part of her brain registered an image of a Smurf cottage.  She walked
toward it.

As she got closer, she saw that it was nothing like a Smurf cottage.
The walls were only about three feet tall, and composed of loose stones
piled together, like bricks, but randomly shaped and without mortar.
The roof was made of a thick layer of dirty straw, and in the gloom she
thought she saw something moving in the roof.  There was smoke rising
from the center of the house, and Aurelia had a brief moment of
wondering whether the house were on fire.  It didn't seem to be.  She
walked around it until she found the entrance.

The floor was dirt, although it was swept relatively clean.  There was
a fire once again, burning in the center of the floor, ringed by
stones.  There was a small three-legged stool, on which sat a woman
wearing a plaid dress.  She had a dreamy look on her face, staring into
the fire.  The furnishings in the room were almost non-existent: a
broom, a pile of straw, and the little stool.  Aurelia wondered how
anyone cooked or ate anything.

The woman at the fire looked up suddenly.  Aurelia was not surprised,
she'd expected it somehow.  Her face was dirty but proud.  She looked
to be in her 40s, with grey hairs intermingled with the light brown
swept up into a hasty bun.  The woman beckoned, and Aurelia sat on the
dirt floor.  She looked down and discovered that she was wearing a
similar plaid dress under a woolen cloak.  Her own hair hung about her
face, its dark caress oddly comforting.

"Kimmar a djean mee an sheow?" Aurelia asked.  She'd meant to ask why
she was here, but it had come out in that funny language.  When she
thought back on the conversation after waking, she remembered that it
had all been in the language, but she only remembered the meanings, and
not the sounds.

"You've been a long time coming," said the woman.  Aurelia rebelled
from calling her "old," although she looked old and tired.

"I don't understand."

"No matter.  You must learn quickly."  Abruptly, the woman stood, and
motioned for Aurelia to stand as well.  She did.  The woman held up a
small, sharp-looking knife that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
"Iron," she said, holding out the knife to Aurelia.  She took it
gingerly.  It was surprisingly heavy in her hand, and cold.  "Defeats
the Old Woman and her kind."

"What old woman?  Iron?"

"No matter.  Remember, iron.  Come with me."  The woman strode quickly
out of the hut, ducking under the doorway arch.  Aurelia realized she
was tall, even taller than Aurelia, who was used to being the tallest
woman in a given group.  The woman's dress fluttered about her legs as
she walked, and Aurelia noticed she was wearing no shoes.

They walked over the scrubby brush, which Aurelia suddenly realized was
heather.  They walked for minutes, then hours.  Aurelia could no longer
be sure where anything was.  Her only touchpoint had been the little
hut, and it was long gone amid the rolling hills of this odd place.  It
was fully dark now in any case, and the moon struggled to cast light
through the clouds, rising slowly from the horizon.

The whole walk was silent.  All she could hear was the wind blowing
over the heather.  Fog started to writhe by, blown on the wind into
strange, dancing shapes.  Aurelia started to think she could hear
music.  She rushed to catch up to the woman, and was on the verge of
asking her a question when she put up a hand, and they both halted.

The woman grabbed Aurelia's shoulder, and pulled her down into a
crouching position along with her.  "See," she said, pointing at
something in the distance.  Aurelia could definitely hear music now.
It was thin, like it was being played over a phone connection.  Aurelia
briefly wondered what a phone was, then remembered.  The woman was
pointing at, as far as Aurelia, could tell, a patch of dark land
exactly like everywhere else.

"I don't understand.  What are you pointing at?"

"See there, look girl, look.  Don't look with your eyes."  Aurelia
glanced at the woman's face.  It was hard and set, her slate grey eyes
nearly as pale as her skin as she stared at where her finger was
pointing.

Aurelia realized what the woman was saying and... shifted something.
She didn't know quite what she did, but now there was a clear vision of
something, rather a bunch of somethings, dancing on the hillside.  They
were pink and green and red and orange and sparkly and trailed that
not-light behind them as they danced.  In the reality of the dream, the
image grew bigger, and she could see more clearly: odd, nearly-human
figures dancing to music being played on a little harp and a
stick-shape one of the figures held up to its mouth, probably a flute
or whistle.  "Oh, I see."

"The Fair Folk.  The Old Woman is with them.  Now you're awake, and
she'll be coming back.  You have your vision and your iron."

"I'm not awake, this is a dream.  There's no way this isn't a dream,"
said Aurelia, as much to herself as the strange, hard woman.  "I'm not
awake."

"You're awake as you're meant to be, and it's been a long time coming."
The woman spared a brief glance at Aurelia.  "You'll do."  She stood
again, and was off, retracing their steps.

In a few steps, they were back in sight of the hut.  The woman strode
in, and Aurelia followed.  There was now a cauldron hanging over the
fire, with a big stick or spoon poking out.  The woman grabbed it, and
gave the pot a couple strokes.

"Now, remember, iron.  But also remember: hair.  Don't give up your
hair.  Old magic in hair."  She gave the pot another stir.  "They're
coming," she said, not looking up from the pot.  Aurelia didn't know
what she meant.

"Who's coming?"

"No matter.  You must be off with your iron.  You'll do.  Now begone."

Aurelia awoke slowly, swimming up through depths of dreamy haze.  As
she came to herself, she was saying the word, "Yarannachagh," in the
language she didn't know.  But she knew that meant iron.

Chapter

"Woah, that is a freaky dream!" Jenn clapped her hand over her mouth
theatrically.  It was two days after the dream had awoken Aurelia with the
foreign word for iron on her lips, and she had finally managed to get
Jenn and herself in the same room together.  They were sitting in
Aurelia's apartment, sipping at hot tea and daintily eating cookies.

"It was... I guess profound is a good word.  It was so real.  It was
like I was there, wherever there was.  If I saw it on a map, I might
recognize it, kinda thing.  But I don't think it exists any more.  I
think where I was, it was in the past.  Every time I opened a door and
went through, I was going back in time, somehow."  Aurelia sipped her
tea, and looked thoughtfully at a pile of clothes against the far wall.

She got up, and walked over.  "What the hell... I thought Jason 
got all his stuff.  This is his shirt.  Fuck," she made a disgusted
face as she picked up the errant clothing.  "I bet he...." She trailed
off, and Jenn got up abruptly, seeing the change that came over Aurelia's
face.  She grabbed her friend by the shoulder.

"Aurey?  You ok?"

Aurelia didn't respond.  She didn't even acknowledge Jenn's presence.
Her legs buckled, and Jenn guided her awkwardly to the floor.
Aurelia's eyes were open, but she wasn't seeing what was in the room.
Her breathing was shallow and quick, and Jenn was suddenly afraid that
Aurelia was having a heart attack or something.  She got as far as
pulling out her phone and unlocking it before Aurelia returned,
suddenly coming to life, and looking around as if recovering her sight
after being snowblind.

"Oh," said Aurelia.  Slowly, like snow melting, her face fell,
and Aurelia started crying.  Jenn sat down next to her, and grabbed her
friend in a tight embrace.  They sat like that, facing each other on
the floor and hugging tightly, for a few minutes.  Finally, Aurelia
stopped crying and looked up at Jenn with an unreadable expression on
her face.

"It was," she said, before she stopped, her face going bright red again
and tears once again welling up in her eyes.  She sniffled mightily,
and tried again.  "It was him.  He did it.  You didn't do it."

"What are you talking about?  Who did what?  I don't understand, Aurey.
What happened?  I thought you were dying!"  Jenn started crying
herself, overwhelmed with feeling now that the apparent danger was
over.

"No, not..." Aurelia paused again to let a sob out.  "Not dying.  I
just saw... saw you and Jason.  He did it, not you.  You didn't want
to."  She dropped her tear-stained face onto Jenn's shoulder, her own
shoulders shaking with more sobs as the emotion worked its way through
her.  She pounded the floor weakly with a fist.  "He did it.  I thought
I was done with this shit!"

"But... I let... I didn't say no, when he... Oh, Aurey!" Jenn collapsed
into tears again, and the two women leaned against each other, quietly
grieving events over which they no longer had any control.

Chapter


Aurelia sat in her bed, pondering the little knife.  She hadn't shown
it to Jenn.  It was too weird that she'd brought it back from a dream,
somehow.  It was very crude-looking, with a long triangle for a blade,
and a handle that was just an extension of the blade, bent over on
itself.  The whole thing was metal, the handle black, and the blade a
dull grey metallic color.  It was a little shiny, and as she had
discovered upon finding it in the bed, it was razor sharp; she had the
bandage to prove it.  She'd taped up a piece of newsprint wrapped
around the blade to form a kind of sheath for it.  Dan Savage's advice
column, Savage Love, was just visible wrapping around the edge of the
blade.

She set it on the little bedside table, and pondered.  One of the books
about fairies (she'd read five or six at this point, and they were
blurring together in her head) had had a long section on iron, and how
it burned fairies like fire.  It had actually been a long disposition
on the reasons behind the folk belief: fairies, it said, were cultural
memories of the Bronze-age people who had lived in the British isles
before the Celts had arrived, with their Iron-age techology.
Naturally, the iron tools had proven superior to the more primitive
bronze and copper tools, and the Celts had overwhelmed the previous
inhabitants.  The memory was preserved as iron having magic power over
the fairies.

The other books she'd read had all said something about iron being bad
for fairies.  It was a very consistent theme, and if it weren't for the
knife she'd brought back from the dream, she would have assumed that
the dream was just that: a very detailed, very real-seeming dream.  She
already had the idea of iron in her mind.

The hair, though.  That was a new one.  None of the books had mentioned
anything about hair.  Thinking about the foreign woman's words, she
realized that she did understand: voodoo dolls needed to have the hair
of the victim or something, didn't they?  Even on a less conscious
level than that, she understood that to have a part of someone else's
body, whatever it was, was to have power over them.  Hair, nail
clippings, teeth, even dead skin cells maybe.  She had a hunch that
she'd had the vision about Jason and Jenn because of something in his
shirt.  It had happened almost the moment she touched it, after all.

That vision had been overwhelming in more ways than one.  Previous
visions were impersonal, possibly interesting in the way that seeing
one brief scene from a movie might be interesting, but nothing to do
with her.  In that one, she had seen the whole of Jason's seduction of
Jenn.  They had both been a bit drunk.  He had cornered her, and
despite her body language, which had clearly said no, pressed on,
kissing and stroking her until their fitful, unenjoyable-looking
consummation.  She had, indeed, never verbalized what her body was
saying.  Aurelia knew, though.  Jenn had been taken against her will.

The previous visions also hadn't been such complete stories, usually
showing only a brief moment in a much larger story.  This vision had
had a definite beginning, middle and end.

Aurelia realized she was sitting in bed, hugging her knees, and quietly
weeping.  She uncurled herself angrily, wiping away the tears, and
looked around her little room.  It was nearly 2 am by the clock at the
bedside, but she didn't feel like sleeping.  She got up and tugged on
the fuzzy deerskin slippers Jason had given her as a Christmas present
last year.  She wore them almost daily, and no longer thought of them
as being a present from Jason, but rather just a part of her daily
wardrobe.

She flopped down in front of the TV, and flipped channels, but there
was almost literally nothing on: infomercials, C-SPAN, NASA TV, random
sporting events she didn't care about.  She clicked it off again,
frustrated that she was too restive to sit still and be lulled to sleep
by the blue glow of the screen.  She got up and grabbed her phone, but
her friends on Facebook and Twitter were similarly dormant.  The whole
world was asleep, and she needed a distraction.

Huffing unconsciously in frustration, she stomped quietly about the
apartment, half way between wanting to exress her anger, and not
wanting to wake her downstairs neighbors.  Finally, she pulled on
leggings, a cute turquoise skirt, a warm white sweater and a scarf,
grabbed her phone and purse, and walked outside.

The air outside was brisk, and her breath congealed in front of her
face as she exhaled.  She walked quickly up the hill, unsure where she
was going, thinking only to burn off energy.  On a whim, she turned up
Broadway, and walked toward the business district to the north.  She
could feel her cheeks getting red as she cooled down from the night
air, and she started to feel a bit better.  She kept walking, though.

The bars had gotten out half an hour ago, and there was still a
smattering of people around, not quite resolved enough on going home to
hail a cab or stumble to their cars.  She walked past a knot of people
in dark coats, who were talking to each other in elevated voices and
smoking cigarettes (and other things, she decided as she walked past).
She surreptitiously stole a glance at them as she walked by, and was a
little surprised to see that she could mark out the drunken ones by a
corona of purple not-light around their heads.

She walked on.  She pondered on that -- she hadn't before truly put a
meaning to the extra stuff she saw.  It was obvious sometimes that she
was seeing things because of the emotion of a situation, but this was the
first time she'd taken a vision and derived meaning from it.  Granted,
she had external clues, but it felt like a positive development in
understanding her new power.

Suddenly she pulled up short.  She wasn't sure why, but something was
wrong.  Then she saw it: there was someone walking rapidly down the
sidewalk towards her, and he was trailing a bright red not-light behind
him.  Looking around, suddenly near panic, she ducked into a shadowed 
doorway, unsure if he was coming for her, or was just walking.  He
walked past, and she breathed a sigh of relief: not coming for her.
Suddenly, her curiosity burned bright, and she followed him.  She
didn't have to stay close: the red trail lingered behind him for more
than a block.  She could see little sparkles and some kind of glitter
popping and fizzing from him.

The man suddenly slowed, and similarly moved into a shadowed area
behind a building column.  She slowed down, not wanting to get close.
She didn't know what red with sparkles meant, but she was pretty sure
it wasn't good.  She got close enough that her choice was to stop
walking, or walk past him.  The red stuff was in a cloud around him,
and she couldn't really seem him past it, like it was a smoke screen.

As she got closer, indecisive, he literally leapt at her, causing her
to shriek in surprise and stop in her tracks.  He was upon her in a
moment, and his hands grabbed her wrists painfully, and she could see
his face through the red cloud.  He was snarling, his face unshaven and
evil looking.  "Gimme your purse and your jewelry.  If you scream,
you ain't gonna like what happens.  Got it?"

Her mind was a blank.  She remembered something at freshman orientation
about self-defense, but it was years ago, and she couldn't remember
what they said.  Her face must have been blank as well.  He said, "You
gonna give me the shit, or do I have to get angry, bitch?"

She almost spazmodically raised her knee, trying to hit him in the
groin, but he was ready for it, and blocked the clumsy strike.  Without
saying anything more, he pulled back his hand, and punched her hard in
the face.  She screamed, dropping almost to limpness in his grip, her
eyes closed -- there was a numbness in her face, and she was seeing
spots in front of her eyes.  She felt herself starting to black out,
and hit the pavement in a slumped pile.

When she came to, she didn't have any idea how long it had been.
Everything looked the same, but the man with his cloud of red was
nowhere to be seen.  She clutched at her shoulder, and found that her
purse was still there.  Her butt ached, but from falling, not from any
further assault.  She looked around, bewildered, and realized there was
something piled up nearby that hadn't been there before.  She got up,
shakily, and looked at the pile.

It was the man.  His eyes were staring lifelessly up at her, and she
suppressed a squeak as she realized there was a slowly expanding pool
of blood seeping out from underneath him.

She shrieked out loud when her arm was grabbed roughly by a hand that
felt like stone, it was so hard.  She spun her head around, and saw an
unhuman face she'd seen before: it was the fairy who'd given her the
ring, or something very similar.

"What are you doing, you dohdach idiot!?"  It snarled at her, then
dragged her bodily down an alleyway.  She might as well have tried to
resist a locomotive.  She thought of the iron knife, which was far from
where she was.  Finally, in a pool of shadow, it slowed and stopped,
dropping its hand from her arm.

It took a visible breath, and appeared to calm down a little bit.  A
cool and collected part of her brain noted that she didn't see any
emotion-stuff coming from it, and wondered why.  "When I gave you the
gift of Sight, I didn't think you were going to waste it so.  Why are
you letting men attack you?  You are the Seer!"

"I didn't... mean to?  I didn't let anyone do anything, he attacked
me!  Who are you?"  Now that the fear was past, she was starting to
shake with reaction.

The creature flexed its claws with a creaking noise, then replied.  "I
am Dongail."  Again, the swallowed ng sound made it almost sound like
Dohul.  "I am She, as I told you before.  You are very lucky I was
nearby and heard your screams.  That man wanted to kill you."

"He did?"

"Yes, you should have been able to See that.  Why did you put yourself
into danger?"

"I didn't mean to.  Who are you!?  You're not my mother!"

The creature stared silently at her.  It blinked slowly, and its wings
shuddered.  "It is thanks to me that you're not dead.  The police don't
usually enjoy finding dead men on the sidewalk.  I suggest you go home.
Right now.  If you're to survive, you need to be cleverer than this."
Domhnaill spread its wings abruptly and leapt into the sky, leaving
Aurelia with no one to reply to.

Chapter

Aurelia arrived at home without further incident.  She pulled off the
sweater and leggings, suddenly overwarm from the exertion of walking.
As she tossed the sweater, she saw a bloody handprint wrapped around
the sleeve.  "Aw, fuck," she said to herself quietly.  She dropped the
sweater into a sinkful of cold water and worked at it with diluted
vinegar after checking for instructions on getting blood out of wool on
her phone.

As she was blotting at the white sleeve, she had plenty of time to
consider what had just happened.  She decided, first of all, that there
was no way that fairy was female, whatever he said.  She wondered,
though, why he had been so worried about her getting into trouble, and
had seemed so protective.

Second of all, she thought back over his words about her "expecting to
survive."  Survive what?  It's not like he'd given her super strength
or a Lasso of Truth or anything.  She wasn't a superhero, she was a
regular girl who could see weird things that weren't really there.
Although, she thought back to herself, it's more like they *are* there,
and I'm the only one who can see them.  The fairy himself seemed pretty
real, and no one else seemed to notice that he had 30 foot wings
sprouting out of his back.

In any case, the ability to see things didn't mean she had magical
powers, did it?  It was more like a party trick than a real power.  Not
like she could wave a wand and turn criminals into frogs.  This brought
her back to Jenn's comment about taking off her ring, and she wondered
if the mugger would have turned into a frog had he tried to take it.
She made a face at the thought, and suddenly flinched.

Putting down the sweater, which now had a pink and slightly larger
handprint on it, she moved to a mirror, and looked cautiously in.

Instead of her own face looking back out, she just saw darkness.  It
was unreal.  It was so dark that the glassy surface should have been
reflecting the room and her own image, even if the silvered back
wasn't, but all she could see was blackness.  As she considered this,
she touched her face where she'd been hit, and there was a little
explosion of pain that distracted her from the malfunctioning mirror.
There was no blood on her fingers, but she had an idea that she must
look pretty rough, and a bit more exploring discovered a fattened lip
that was still numb.  Struck by an idea, she grabbed her phone and
flipped it around, snapping a picture of herself.

Sure enough: her left eye was well-blackened, and starting to swell
shut; her cheek was cut, almost like the skin was ripped; her lip
looked swollen and angry; there was probably going to be a bruise on
her cheek as well.  She put the phone down with disgust, and went back
to the sweater, but she found she didn't have the energy to work on it
now.  Aurelia sat gingerly on the sofa, suddenly feeling achy and sore
everywhere.

"Why me?" she said to the room at large.

Chapter

Aurelia sat, or floated, or stood, overlooking a little hillock
somewhere she'd never seen before.  It was covered with a low scrubby
brush, and she realized it was the heather from that other dream.  The
little hillock had a solitary tree growing from the top of it, which
stood unnaturally still.  The whole scene was very still, just the tiny
hill, the tree, the heather, and nothing else.

It was kind of pretty.  The sun was out, shining fitfully through
broken clouds.  There wasn't another person in sight.  Aurelia could
tell that this was important, but wasn't sure why.  That hill, she
knew, was the locus of something terribly important.

The dream (for she could clearly tell it was a dream) lasted a long
time.  She may have sat there, looking at the little hill, for an hour
or two, in the dream.  It wasn't boring.  It was a scene she thought
she was supposed to remember.

She found, if she tried, she could kind of circle the hillock, and she
examined it from every angle.  It was almost unnaturally symmetrical,
she thought.  She didn't know how such a hill might have formed, but
this didn't look like something that nature had created.

She became aware, slowly, that she was lying in bed, and tried to go
back to sleep, to return to the dream of the little hill.  She rolled
onto her side, and was suddenly, sharply awake: her face screamed pain
into her consciousness, and she jerked up from the pillow.  "Ohhh,
fuck," she said, putting a hand gingerly to her cheek.  Her voice
sounded odd to her ears, and moving her mouth brought the news that her
fat lip was no longer numb.

Chapter

"Oh my god, are you ok, Aurey!?" Jenn's voice came over the phone, full
of concern and surprise.  Aurelia had awoken and simply stayed up after
her adventurous night, and called Jenn as soon as she thought she'd be
up.  She had described the mugging, knowing that no amount of make-up
would cover the damage to her face at the moment.

"Yeah, I'm ok," her enunciation sounded weird with the swollen lip.
"He didn't get anything.  I don't know, he just jumped out and grabbed
me.  I don't know what happened to him."  She wasn't sure why she
omitted the part about the big fairy intervening, but she decided she
probably wasn't ready to tell that part of the story yet.  Jenn knew
about the fairy giving her the ring, after all, but somehow knowing
that he would so casually kill someone was a different matter.

"That is SO freaky.  Do you want me to come over?  I could call in
sick, my boss is pretty understanding, I don't think he'd mind.  Never
mind, I'm coming over.  Oh my god.  Why didn't you call me when it
happened?  Now I'm just freaking out.  I'll be there in 20 minutes.
Don't go anywhere, ok?"

Aurelia promised to stay put, and Jenn clicked off.  15 minutes later,
she was knocking at the door.  Aurelia let her in, and Jenn gathered
her up in a massive hug, only relenting when Aurelia squeaked in pain.
"Oh no, I'm sorry, Aurey!"  She hugged her again, more gently, as an
apology for the first hug.  "Oh my god.  Your face!  Come over here to
the window, I want to see what he did to you."  Jenn led Aurelia over
to the window, with its scenic view of the building across the street,
dropping her coat and purse on the sofa as they passed.

"Oh, wow.  Wow.  Just... That sucks!"  Jenn's face was overwhelmed with
tender concern for her friend.  "Oh, Aurey.  What were you doing out so
late?  I mean, Capitol Hill's pretty safe, as long as you're not
assaulted by armies of hipsters on bikes or someting, but that was
kinda stupid, wasn't it?"  She made a tsk tsk noise.  "Tell me exactly
what happened," she said, sitting back in her chair.  They were at the
little table which sat in front of the window.

"I will. Do you want anything?  I think I'm going to make myself some
coffee.  I didn't get much sleep last night."  Aurelia got up, and
spoke over her shoulder as she walked to the kitchen.  "It turns out
that when the left side of your face is all messed up, and the right
side of your butt hurts from falling down, it's pretty hard to sleep
comfortably."  She clinked dishes and set a kettle on the stove.  The
electric element glowed dull orange, and the kettle made popping noises
as it slowly heated up.

"Yeah," said Jenn from the other room, "I'll have some coffee too.
Come back here, tell me what happened!"

Aurelia returned, bearing a plate with grapes, a couple of bagels, and
cream cheese.  "Ok," she said, setting them down on the table.  "I was
awake last night, just thinking about stuff," Jenn made "uh-huh" noises
as Aurelia talked, "and I decided that going for a walk would be a good
idea, maybe burn off some excess energy or something.  So I went out,
and walked up to Broadway. It was just after the bars all closed, you
know, so there were these crowds of hipsters standing around with
nothing to do.  It seemed pretty safe.  I was up there, you know, just
past Urban Outfitters, where they're doing that construction?  And
there was no one else around.  I saw this guy, who was walking along
kinda fast, and he was trailing red."

"This is your magical not-light stuff?"

"Yeah, he had this huge trail of red stuff behind him.  And he was
walking really fast, and if I couldn't see extra stuff like I do, I
still would have known he was kind of angry or something.  Anyway, I
was afraid he was coming for me, so I ducked into a doorway that was
kind of dark, and waited for him to walk by.  He did, and when he did,
I suddenly just really wanted to follow him."

"That was dumb, girl.  Give angry men lots of room so they can be angry
at someone else."

"I know." Aurelia rolled her eyes at the admonishment.  "But I wanted to
see if I could figure out what was happening.  The red stuff was really
strong, I've never seen so much not-light stuff before.  So anyway, I
followed him for a block or two, and then he jumped out at me.  I just
kind of froze... Don't look at me like that, he was scary!  What was I
supposed to do, karate-kick him in the face?  I don't know karate!  He
grabbed my wrists," she held out her wrists, one of which showed slight
purpling in about a hand-print configuration, "and told me to give him
my purse.  I didn't, I just stood there.  He hit me in the face," she
pointed at the deepening bruise on her cheek and the black eye, which
was now swollen most of the way shut, "and I fell over.  I think I
passed out.  When I woke up again, he was gone."

"And he didn't take anything?"  Jenn's face was incredulous.

"No, I guess not," Aurelia looked down at the table.  Jenn pounced.

"You guess not?  What does that mean?  Did he rape you?  Oh my god, if
he raped you, I'm going to find him and rip his fucking balls off with
my fingernails!  Fuck!  He did, didn't he!"

"No," said Aurelia, trying to interrupt the torrent.

"Come on, we're going to the ER, they can do a rape kit, and we'll find
this asshole, and we'll rip his fucking head off.  He is gonna get it!"

"No," said Aurelia again.

"Oh fuck, you DO NOT mess with my friends!  Get your coat, we're going
up to Swedish, come on.  Did you take a shower yet?  Come on, what are
you waiting for!?"

"He didn't rape me!"  Aurelia started to feel angry about it, not sure
why she was having the reaction.

"How do you know?  You were unconscious!"  Jenn was standing over
Aurelia, her chest heaving with barely suppressed rage.

Aurelia gave her a sour look.  "I am pretty sure I would have noticed.
No, sit down.  Calm down."  She grabbed Jenn's hand, and pulled her
back to the chair.  Jenn sat, reluctantly.  "There's something I didn't
tell you on the phone.  Not rape.  I'm ok... I mean, yeah, I'm bruised
up, but he didn't break anything.  I've... god, I guess I've had
worse," Aurelia thought back to a particularly abusive boyfriend her
mother had dated.  She'd forgotten about him: he was the kind who got
drunk and started hitting people for no reason, including kids.  She
was only 7 or 8 at the time, and didn't remember much except she'd had
to stay out of school for a week once when he gave her a black eye.
Her mom wouldn't let her be seen in school like that.

"Anyway," she said, shaking off the unwelcome reverie.  "When I came
to, he was... Um.  He was dead."

Jenn's eyes got huge.  "Oh my god!  Did you kill him?  How?  Did you
kill him with your magic powers!?  Holy crap!"

"Calm down!  No, I didn't kill him.  I don't have magic powers, or, at
least, not like that.  No... I... He was killed by that fairy that gave
me the ring."  Aurelia stopped talking, unsure what sort of reaction
this would provoke in Jenn.

Eventually, Jenn said, "Wow."  After a pause for emphasis, she
continued, "So, is he, like, you're guardian angel now?  Oh my god, is
he an angel?  You said he has wings, right?"

"No, he's... Well, maybe he's an angel, I don't know.  He said he was a
fairy.  Anyway, no.  I don't have a guardian angel now.  I think he
must live around here, and happened to be nearby.  That's sort of what
he said, I think, about the being nearby.  He was mad at me for getting
attacked.  That was the weird thing, Jenn, he was mad at me like I was
insulting him or something.  He asked me how I 'expected to survive' if
I was going to go around letting people attack me.  Like I have to
worry about being attacked every day.  The whole thing was weird."

"How did he kill him?"  Jenn's voice was hushed, expecting something,
although Aurelia wasn't sure what she was expecting.

Aurelia got up, and went over to the wet pile of sweater, and held it
up.  The handprint was still fairly visible after she'd given up last
night.  "With his hands, I guess.  That's his handprint."

"Holeeee shit."  Jenn sat silent, staring at the pink smudge.

Aurelia put the sweater down, and came back to the table.  "So that's
what happened last night.  I haven't really slept since then, but I did
get to sleep long enough to have one dream about a little hill, which
was also weird, but in a totally different way."

"So, is he still out there?"

"What?"

"The dead guy.  Is he still there?"

"I doubt it.  Someone must have spotted him by now and called the cops.
Maybe that's what those sirens were a little while ago."

"There are sirens every 20 minutes, Aurelia."

"I know.  20 minutes?"  Aurelia considered.  "Yeah, I guess there are.
Wow.  Anyway, no, I'm sure he's probably gone by now."

"Let's go look."  Jenn had a concentrated, determined look on her face.
Aurelia knew that look.  It had preceded the infamous IHOP incident
from college.

"No way!  What if they think I did it!"

"Why would they think you did it?"

"Because criminals always return to the scene of the crime, don't
they?  I'm pretty sure that's true."

"So what, you're a pretty girl walking past.  You can flutter your
eyelashes at the cop, and say, 'Oh, officer, is that a dead body!?'"
Jenn affected a high-pitched voice and mimed pressing the front of her
skirt into her legs with both arms straight.  "You're just another face
walking by on Broadway.  They won't think you did it.  Anyway, you
didn't.  That asshole attacked you.  Even if you had killed him, it
would be self-defense."

"I guess," said Aurelia, not convinced.

Chapter

There was, in fact, no dead body.  After they ate bagels and grapes and
finished their coffee, Jenn and Aurelia walked up to Broadway.  It
looked very different in daylight, and Aurelia had to walk along the
sidewalk two times before she decided she'd found the right spot.  It
was marked by a small piece of yellow plastic CAUTION tape, which still
fluttered unheeded on a corner of the building.

"See, nothing to see."  Aurelia didn't know if she was glad, or
disappointed.  She looked at the spot, and tried to remember what had
happened the night before.  She'd seen the guy there, maybe?  No, that
didn't look right.  "I think I have to come back when it's dark to
figure out what happened.  It all looks different.  That's the spot
where he was, though."  Aurelia just thought she could make out a
darker stain on the sidewalk from where his life had bled out of him.
She shuddered at the thought.

The found the alley where the fairy with the weird name had pulled her,
but there was nothing to see.  It was a paved alleyway.  There were no
weird marks or signs they could see of his presence there, or hers, for
that matter.

Aurelia turned back to return to the street, and grabbed Jenn's arm in
sudden fright.  "Do you see that?" she asked, under her breath.  Jenn
looked where Aurelia was looking.  "The dog?"

"That's not... a dog.  I don't know what it is."

"What do you mean, not a dog.  It's a little fluffy dog, like one of
those Scottie dogs.  What do you see?"  Jenn hadn't actually ever been
with Aurelia when they were in a position to discuss what each was
seeing and compare notes.

Aurelia's face had gone white.  "It's kind of like a dog, but it's
black, like black like I've never seen before.  It's got red eyes, and
its teeth are huge.  Oh my god," she said, squeaking as the little
terrier looked up at them and whuffed a challenge.

"It's just a little Scottie.  He looks harmless.  Come here boy,
where's your owner?"  Jenn walked toward the dun-colored dog with her
hand out.

"Don't!  Oh Jesus!"  Aurelia stood, terrified, rooted to the spot.  The
black thing was tall enough that its head was level with Jenn's as Jenn
walked toward the dog she saw, half bent over.  Her hand was about level
with the thing's knee, and she seemed oblivious that its long,
evil-looking teeth were soon to be within inches of her face.  She
didn't see it at all.

Aurelia dashed forward, grabbed Jenn by the arm, and pulled her away.
"Run, you idiot!"  She forced Jenn to run along, up the alleyway,
casting backwards glances at the dog-thing as they went.  Jenn
protested, but ran along.  The dog didn't follow, to her immense
relief.  One final glance showed a man walking up to it, and clipping a
leash impossibly to the space between its legs.  He had something weird
about him that Aurelia couldn't identify, and she had the impression he
wasn't quite human.

They stopped at the next street up, panting a bit.  Aurelia's face and
eye throbbed from the sudden activity.  "What did you do that for?"
said Jenn, cross at the inexplicable reaction.

"Did you ever see Ghostbusters?"

"What? I guess so.  I was probably 5 or something.  What are you
talking about?"

"They had these dogs, when that goddess shows up at the end.  It looked
sort of like one of those things."

"That's crazy, Aurelia.  Anyway, I don't know what you're talking
about.  It was a little schnauser or someting."

"Listen, Jenn," said Aurelia, pulling her around so they faced each
other.  Her face was set, and Jenn immediately understood how seriously
Aurelia was taking this.  "I'm seeing things that are really there, I
think.  Like, more than anyone else ever has, maybe.  Have you ever
seen a werewolf walking down the street?"  Jenn mutely shook her head
no.  "Well, I have.  I don't think I'm going crazy, but it's either
that, or I'm seeing what no one else can see is really there.  That
fairy was real.  We'll look at his handprint, I bet it's a lot bigger
than it should be or something.  You believe me, don't you?  You don't
think I'm crazy?"

Jenn hesitated, glancing back at the now-departed dog.  "I guess.  I
mean... it just looked like a little dog to me.  Are you sure about all
this?"

Aurelia's face was scared.  "I'm sure.  Either I'm going crazy, or what
I'm seeing is real.  I don't think I'm going crazy, but maybe that's
what crazy people think."

"I don't think you're going crazy, Aurey.  You're still you.  I'd know.
I mean," she said, visibly cheering up, "I've known you for years, I'd
know if you needed to hit the loony bin, right?"  She smoothed down
Aurelia's hair.  "You're not crazy."

"Ok.  If I'm not crazy," Aurelia hooked her hand around Jenn's head,
and brought her forward until they were standing, touching foreheads,
"then you gotta listen when I tell you there's a big evil dog-thing
standing there.  Or whatever it is."

Jenn grinned.  "Deal."

Chapter


Aurelia returned to the library on the UW campus.  She wasn't quite
sure what she was looking for, but it was the one place that she'd made
progress trying to understand what was going on.  Somehow, fairies and
demon dogs and werewolves and little blue guys with stunted legs were
all real.  Somehow, she was able to see them.  Obviously it was all
linked together, but how?

She stopped at the reference desk again, and sat down in front of the
librarian, who was different from the last time she'd been there.  It
took her a moment to really phrase the question right, but she finally
said, "Can you help me to understand what second sight is?"

"Oh," said the librarian, a woman in her late 20s with bright blue hair
and cat-eye glasses, "I can tell you some, and we can find more in a
couple of books.  What do you want to know?  Will you need references
for a paper, or are you just interested?"

"I'm just interested for the moment.  I just don't really know what it
is.  Someone mentioned it to me a little while ago, and now I need to
figure out what it really means."  Aurelia twisted the strap of her
bag nervously, unsure why she was feeling so pensive about this.

"Ok, let's start with the basics, then."  She turned her computer
monitor so both of them could see it, and pulled up the Wikipedia
article on Second Sight.  "So, I know it's not a real source, but
Wikipedia can usually give you a good overview of something in fairly
approachable terms."  She read silently, as did Aurelia.

"So, it's just when you have visions?" asked Aurelia after finishing
the brief article.

"That's a good summary.  Second Sight was commonly accredited to
witches, seers and wise-women (which are all kind of the same thing, if
you ask me), typically in Scottish and Irish folklore.  There were
similar powers in other cultures' folklore, but the term Second Sight
is pretty specific to the Celtic stories.  Usually you find it
providing some pivotal plot point in a story, like when Macbeth runs
into the three witches at the beginning of the play, and they tell him
his future.  Shakespeare didn't call it Second Sight, but that's a good
practical example.

"The stories aren't always clear on what the power is.  Sometimes it's
knowledge of the future, sometimes it's the ability to see things that
are happening right now, but far away, and sometimes it's the ability
to see when a person is lying or something.  Sometimes, it's a clear
vision which is recounted in the story.

"If you go further afield, to Greek folklore, you find the Oracle at
Delphi, who tells the future, but usually in terms so cryptic that you
don't understand the meaning until it's already happening.  Crappy kind
of fortune telling, if you ask me.  Oh, and for instance Gypsies have
traditionally had some ability to see the future by reading someone's
palm, which could be considered a kind of Second Sight.  Does that
help?"  She smiled helpfully, and cocked her head to one side.

"I guess so.  But are there descriptions of what the person with the
Second Sight actually sees?"

"Probably.  Let's see what we can find."  She pulled the computer
monitor back so she could see it clearly, and started typing rapidly.
She turned the screen back, and there was a list of titles shown.
"Let's start here."

She got up, and grabbed a sheet of paper off the printer.  "Follow me.
We'll start in Reference, those won't be checked out already.  You can
never tell, mid-quarter, what's going to be gone, no matter what the
computer says."  They walked up to the Reference section, and the
librarian with the blue hair pulled down a half-dozen books, stacking
them into Aurelia's hands like cordwood.  She directed them over to a
long table, where they sat down and started flipping through books.

Aurelia found a couple promising sections, and started reading.  As she
read, she became aware of the vague feeling that she was being watched.
She glanced up, hoping that it wasn't another demon dog, or a gnome, or
anything equally weird.  At first she didn't see anything, but then a
sudden movement caught her eye: someone had just ducked behind a shelf,
and didn't seem to be aware that she could see between the books.  She
waited, as much relieved as anything, and slowly the figure revealed
itself: thick glasses, tousled hair, weedy build.  It was Stuart, from
the last time she'd been in.

He seemed to be speared on her gaze, as if he was no longer quite in
control of his body.  When she didn't look away, he took halting steps
toward her, a swirl of multi-colored not-light evaporating off him like
steam in all directions.  The not-light gradually faded from its
variety of hues to the blue-green she recognized from last time, as he
drew nearer.  She wanted to laugh with the absurdity of it all.  His
face was growing redder as the emanations grew more intensely
blue-green.  Finally, he sat down, and Aurelia had to stifle a giggle
at the expression on his face.

"Hi," he croaked, his voice strained and odd.

She smiled the infuriatingly condescending smile of pretty girls
everywhere when confronted with an obviously smitten boy.  "Hi," she
said, still smiling.  "You recommended that book last time I was here."

His face burned brighter still, and he fixed his gaze on the tabletop
in front of him.  
"Yeah," he said, still staring at the tabletop.

Aurelia waited, but that seemed to exhaust his conversational well.
She thrust her hand across the table, and said, "Hi, I'm Aurelia."  It
took him a moment of clear confusion, the blue-green of his
embarrassment tingeing toward yellow, before he put his own hand into
hers and they had a very awkward handshake.

"What happened?" he said, pointing vaguely at her face.  His own face
reflected a combination of curiosity and revulsion, and Aurelia
couldn't tell if he was bothered by the ugliness of her wounds, or the
thought that someone had inflicted them on her.


"Oh, some guy tried to mug me, but he didn't get anything.  No big
deal."

"That must have hurt.  I'm sorry."  He looked genuinely sorry, and she
flashed into a momentary vision, which may or may not have been
magical, of him being routinely beaten up by other children in the
schoolyard.  She shook it from her.  His gaze was on the tabletop
again.

"It's ok.  Listen, why did you hand me that book, last time?  It was
interesting, but there wasn't a lot about second sight in there."

His stare at the tabletop became more focused and intense, and a wave
of reddish orange pulsed away from him.  Finally, he said, "Sorry."
Once again, that appeared to be the extent of what he had to say.

Aurelia kicked herself mentally, and said, "No, that's not what I
meant.  I wasn't unhappy, I was just wondering about your reasoning.
It was a really interesting book."

Without a word, and without looking at her again, he got up and
half-walked, half-ran out of the library.  He was once again emanating
a hugely multi-colored set of emanations.  Aurelia cursed under her
breath, and got up, torn between following him and just letting him go
be embarrased by himself.  After a moment, she decided, and ran after
him.

"Hey, wait!" she called, jogging across Red Square toward the awkward
figure.  Fortunately, he didn't simply bolt away, and she was able to
catch up to him.  "You don't have to explain anything if you don't want
to, I was just curious.  What's your name?  Come on, I won't bite."

He stopped walking, and stood apparently debating with himself for a
moment.  Then he looked up, although still not at her, and said,
"Stuart."  Conversational efficiency was apparently going to be a theme.

Aurelia stifled an urge to launch into the "I like you, Stuart!  You're
not like the other people in the trailer park!" monologue from the Dead
Milkmen song.  "Nice to meet you, Stuart."  She stopped, unsure what to
say next.  Stuart was clearly on the verge of melting down from
whatever emotions he was going through.  Aurelia briefly wondered if
she could see somehow when people went insane, then got her mind back
to the present.

She motioned back to the library, and said, "Will you join me in the
library?  I'm..." She sought a reason that wouldn't launch him into a
fresh avalanche of embarrassment.  "I'm trying to figure out this
second sight thing, and I get the feeling you might be able to help."

Even without her new perceptive powers, she would have been able to see
that this tactic had worked.  Stuart straightened up a bit, and
actually looked her in the face.  The not-light calmed down, although
it didn't cease.  She was starting to refer to the stuff in her head as
"emotion," which seemed like a more useful description than
"not-light."  He said, "I can probably help with that."  He turned, and
they walked back to the library.

Their conversation was brief but informative.  Interrupted by huge
waves of blue-green emotion stuff, he told her that he was a Humanities
major with a concentration in mythology and folklore.  He also let slip
that he was an avid player of D&D and a half-dozen other games she
didn't recognize, which caused a sufficiently large wave of emotion
particles that she caught herself leaning back to avoid being swept
away.  He looked like he wanted to get up and run off again at this point,
but she talked him down.  He'd heard her asking about second sight, and
had actually recommended the book because it was written by his grandfather,
who'd done his graduate work at the University 70 years before.

"So, what do you know about second sight?" she asked.  Stuart was
finally relaxing a little as the conversation swung into territory he
knew something about.

"Well, in mythology it's usually a plot point, and is frequently a
metaphor for female power over men's thinking."

Aurelia had been about to interrupt that she already knew about what
mythology said about it, but the unexpected divergence to gender
politics caused her to say instead, "Wait, what?  What do you mean,
power over men's thinking?"

"Oh," said Stuart, suddenly embarrassed again.  "Um.  It's just...
Women usually seem to have no power in those stories, but women with
second sight can... I dunno, like, change the whole course of the
story.  Like, if Cu Chulainn had paid more attention to the Morrigan,
he would have died differently.  She was a goddess, so that's a
different manifestation of power, but still, it was her prophesies and
some of her actions that affected him."

"Cu what?  Who's the Morrigan?"  

"Cu Chulainn was an Irish hero who had what we might call super-powers,
now.  He could turn into different animals, and had this berserker
rage, he was basically a super badass hero who fought against the
Tuatha de Danaan..."  He stopped short at the look on her face.
"What?"

"The Tuatha de Danaan.  That name is really familiar."

"It was probably the name of the people who lived in Ireland and
Scotland and maybe England before the Celts came.  Why have you heard
of them?  Oh, duh.  You probably read it in Grandpa Morrey's book."

"Oh yeah.  I read it somewhere.  They're like fairies, aren't they?"

"Well, sort of.  It depends on who you believe, but yeah, that's one
source of the mythology behind fairies.  He used to tell me stories
about them when I was little.  I think that's why I started studying
mythology myself."

At this point, Stuart started, and looked at the screen on his phone.
"Shit, I have to go.  I'm sorry, this has been really... um..."  His
face grew red again.  "Nice.  It was nice.  Um.  Nice to meet you.  See
you around."  He stood up, turned, and left with no ceremony.  Aurelia
was left to sit at the table with a bemused expression on her face.

She sensed an ally, but couldn't tell what kind.

Chapter

An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha sat in her dark tomb, listening.  She
listened with the patience of the grave.  When you've been asleep unto
death for thousands of years, you learn patience.  In the utter
blackness, she moved her arms silently, feeling creaking muscles
protest.

There was the sound again.  Her arm darted out and found the tiny
burrowing rodent.  She chuckled, still exhaling dust, then bit its
little head off.  Yes.  The strength was returning.  Her muscles may
have been creaky, but her mind was sharp.  Soon she would be her old
self again.  Soon she could return to the world of men, and see what
ravages time had wrought.  The Tuatha... She had not considered yet,
but of course te Tuatha must live on.  Fairies were a constant in the
world, must as pain and life and iron were constants.  She spared a
thought, while wiping her chin, for whether any of her old consort
might still live.  If they did, well.  What a delightful reunion they
must have.

She sought, and found, the Seer again.  She was far away, very far.  An
Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha had never known anyone to be so far away;
hadn't known it was possible.  The world had grown larger as she slept,
apparently.  She sought, and sought, but found that she still wasn't
strong enough to see with the Seer's eyes.  Or perhaps the distance
dulled her power.  She wasn't sure.

A twinge of memory caught at her mind, and she tried contorting her
body just *so* and turning her mind just *so*, but couldn't quite reach
it.  She would be shaped like a woman for the time being, she decided.
She wondered idly what she looked like now.  Time has little effect on
the Tuatha.  There was a tiny mirror somewhere in the chamber, but she
couldn't remember where she'd left it.  That was a quest for another
time.

Pleased with her efforts, she reclined again on the bier, chuckling
with her dry breath.  The little rodent burned like a lantern in her
belly, and she slept the daily sleep of mortals, dreaming dreams of
bizarre colorful contrivances with thick wheels, and visiting the
dreams of men.

Chapter

Aurelia woke with a start.  She was curled around some pillows, exactly
as she'd fallen asleep.  She wondered.  What had awoken her?  She
checked in with her body: no, bladder was fine; no cramping yet,
although it would start any day now; oh yes, the face.  For as
self-conscious as she was of her appearance during the day, she
completely forgot about the injuries once she finally fell asleep.  She
put her hand up to her face, and it was just as tender as it had been a
few hours earlier.  "Come on, Aurey.  Sleep time."  It didn't work, but
she did occasionally try a pep talk on herself.

She thought back: had she been dreaming?  She couldn't remember now.
Her dreams had been very vivid in the last month.  Ever since the whole
mad adventure had started, dreams were suddenly much more important.
She couldn't remember having just been dreaming, but maybe it had been
like a dream from before the change, where they faded away the instant
she woke up.

She looked up at the ceiling.  The slanted shadows of the horizontal
blinds were exactly as they always were, although they moved and
shifted weirdly as the trees moved in the wind.  What had woken her up?
It was something that felt out of place.

She raised her head and looked around.  There was nothing to see that
looked out of the ordinary.  Or... what was that in the corner?  No,
that was just a shadow.  It was a stack of books, she recalled, that
she'd organized into the corner in a fit of cleaning.

She was just drifting back to sleep when she heard something out of the
ordinary.  It wasn't the neighbor having sex, or the cat on the other
side that occasionally erupted into bouts of loud meowing.  Something
was moving.  Did she have mice?  She wouldn't put it past the building
management, which was lax in a number of fairly important maintenance
duties, to have left garbage pick up too long.

She sat up, and looked around.  Nothing to see, although the chance of
seeing a mouse in the dark apartment was basically non-existant.  She
stretched, centering the wide neck of the shirt she was wearing,
although it fell over her shoulder again once she put her arms down.
"Some day, I will sleep." She flopped back on the bed, and regretted it
as her cheek and lip started throbbing much more noticeably.

There was the sound again.  Grumbling, she sat up in bed.  Although
Aurelia was petrified of spiders, mice held no terror for her. Still,
she didn't relish having to deal with pests in the apartment,
particularly not at... 3:17, she saw.  She clicked on the bedside
light, and stood up from the low futon mattress she slept on.

Shuffling into the kitchen in her shirt and the slippers, she hugged
herself, suddenly cold once free of the snug warmth of the bed and its
comforter.  The light flickered on, the little twisty bulb starting
life dim and dull.  There was no evidence of mice.  Grumbling more, she
clicked the light off, and turned around to go back to the bedroom.

She shrieked with surprise when she found herself staring at a little
figure staring back at her from the backlit square of the window.
Without thinking about it, she turned on the living room light, and
spotted massive yellow eyes and greenish skin on something that put her
in mind of that hobbit movie.  It was gone in a flash, and she wondered
if she'd really seen it.  She moved quickly over to the window,
momentarily forgetting the bruise on her right hip.  There was nothing
to see.  Had she seen a ringed tail as the thing had turned away?
Maybe it was just a raccoon.  She tried this one on for size, and
decided, no, there was no way a raccoon ever had greenish skin and
giant yellow eyes.

Perhaps she had an infestation, indeed.  It just wasn't the normal
mundane rodents everyone else gets.  Aurelia went to bed thoughtful,
and carefully arranged herself so she was pressing as little as
possible on her various injuries, which throbbed unhappily after the
nocturnal perambulations.

Chapter

Aurelia had reluctantly allowed Jenn to take her dancing.  They were at
a dance club on Capitol Hill which primarily catered to gay men.  She
was indifferent to dancing, whereas Jenn adored it beyond Aurelia's
comprehension.  Particularly right now, with her dramatically black
eye, still-swollen lip (although even Aurelia admitted that it no
longer looked very bad, it just felt huge) and the discomfort of moving
her right leg very much, it seemed like a silly thing to do.  Still,
here she was.

The music throbbed until she thought she could almost see the air
itself moving.  There must have been speakers in the floor or something
-- it was vibrating in time with the music.  She had tried talking to
Jenn, but it was more or less impossible without screaming directly
into each other's ear.  She resigned herself to sitting at the bar with
her drink and watching the crowd.  Jenn had pulled her out for one
song, but she had then begged off due to the injury.  Jenn made a pouty
face for a moment, hugged her, and then swirled off into the crowd with
a blissful smile on her face.

Aurelia examined the crowd.  In the crazy shifting light of the club,
she supposed that at least her black eye wouldn't stand out as badly as
it might.  She was, at this point, comparatively used to seeing strange
figures walking around.  She'd decided that something like 5% of the
inhabitants of Capitol Hill, at least those she'd been able to see,
were not human.  There were humans with goat legs; cat-people;
wolf-people; dog-people; what she was calling gnomes; hobbits (that had
surprised her -- those hobbit movies had gotten it right: short little
people with big hairy feet); elves, with their impossibly tall and
slender build.  Outside, once, she thought she'd seen something like a
dragon flying through the sky.

Here in the club, the percentage was higher.  The variety was endless,
with no two non-humans seeming to be the same.  She wondered, idly, if
they knew they weren't human.  They acted just like everyone else, and
no one else seemed to remark on them being unusual.  Aurelia was
starting to forget what it was like to see 100% humans walking around.
She watched in amusement as a goat-legged man danced past, a gaudy
plastic bead necklace bouncing around on his neck as he danced in a
fishnet shirt.  How did he find pants that fit knees that bent the
wrong direction?

The only pair of non-humans she spotted was a pair of elves.  Thinking
back on it, she realized she had always seen elves in pairs.  They
didn't seem to be couples necessarily, just always two at a time.  This
pair moved across the floor in a series of fluid movements that
reminded her of the counter-intuitive dance moves she'd seen hip-hop
dancers do, where they appeared to be doing one thing, but moved in the
opposite direction somehow.

The song shifted, and the elven pair retired to the bar.  A fellow with
wolfy-looking features, but not quite the full wolf-face she'd seen on
others, wandered past, and as the next song built into its full head of
steam, he beckoned her onto the floor with an impish grin on his face,
made the more devilish by his wolfy features.  She smiled demurely and
shook her head no.  He waggled his finger at her, in an "ah-ah, you're
being naughty" motion, shrugged, and danced off into the crowd.
Aurelia wondered if the non-humans could tell that she could see who
they really were, assuming they even knew themselves.

She saw Jenn dance past, revolving around a guy who looked human until
she saw his back, where he had little feathery wings folded down.  They
were clearly not a costume, although they also weren't the impressive
30-foot wings of the fairy with the strange name that she couldn't
seem to remember.  She wondered if he could actually fly with them.
They looked more like the fantastic wings depicted in one of the fairy
books she'd read, painted by some Victorian artist with a good aesthetic
eye, but without much concept for how the mechanics of flight might
actually work.

Jenn eventually returned to the bar to check in with Aurelia.  She was
glistening with a sheen of sweat from her exertions, and still had the
blissful look on her face.  Aurelia leaned down to her ear, and
shouted, "You were just dancing with a fairy who has little wings
sprouting out of his back!"

She looked surprised, and shouted back, "I was?"

Aurelia mimed little fluttery wings with her fingers and nodded yes.
Jenn managed to convey, "Huh, whaddaya know," with just facial
expressions.  She gave Aurelia a thumbs-up, both showing that she was
happy herself, and checking to see if Aurelia was still ok.  Aurelia
responded with a thumbs-mostly-up.  Jenn paused, as if wondering
whether her friend was still ok, and Aurelia waved her back out to the
dancing throng.  Jenn gave her a big, toothy grin, squeezed her knee
playfully, and returned to the dance floor.

Aurelia returned to crowd-watching.  She found herself wondering more
about the non-humans, and what their status was: whether they knew
themselves that they weren't human.  It seemed an absurd question on
the face of it, but she guessed these creatures had existed all along.
She had Jenn's word that she wasn't going crazy, which meant a lot to
her.  So logically, she must have interacted with non-humans before she
saw them for what they really were.  They must have acted perfectly
normal.

She ordered another drink, opting for a simple PBR after the sticky
concoction which had looked appealing on the specials board, but had
proved too sweet for her tastes.  The bartender, a fey-looking but
human man in his 20s, nodded as he popped the can open, and shouted,
"Compliments of him!" indicating with a wave of his head someone
sitting at the end of the bar.  Aurelia leaned over the bar to look,
and saw a surprisingly dapper-looking man in a modest brown suit and vest,
wearing a brown bowler hat.  He tipped his hat at her, and she smiled
back, lifting her beer in thanks.  He was cute.  She thought again of
what she must look like, in her dance club finery (consisting of a lacy
black top, frilly black tulle skirt and black-and-white striped
leggings, topped off by mid-calf black boots and her hair done up in a
loose up-do with numerous wisps of hair falling around her face), yet
with the black eye and yellowing bruise on her cheek.  The concealer
had helped, but there was still no mistaking that something had
happened.  Still, he had smiled at her.  Maybe she didn't look as bad
as she thought.

As she was pondering all this, he had started to walk down, and Aurelia
was suddenly skeptical, assailed by memories of her own mother's face
cut and bruised as it was on a number of occasions, and the creeps who
seemed to be attracted to that.  He didn't look like a creep.  He was
pretty well dressed compared to most of the guys her mom had dated.
Still, you never could tell.

He arrived, and tipped his hat again.  As he did so, Aurelia saw that
he wasn't quite human: his ears pulled into an elongated point, and his
eyes were a thrilling emerald green even in the dim light of the club,
and were pulled and elongated like Asian eyes despite his otherwise
Caucasian appearance.  He was quite attractive, and Aurelia found
herself warming to him despite the strangeness of his appearance.

"Hello!" he shouted, leaning in to be heard over the noise of the room.
She nodded her response, waiting for him to say whatever it was he
wanted to say.  As he leaned in, she couldn't help noticing that he had
a very distinctive smell about him that didn't seem to be perfume, but
also wasn't quite like anything she'd smelled before.  It was pleasant,
but alien.  It put her in mind of a cat, for some reason.

"I noticed you sitting all by yourself," he shouted, again leaning in,
"and thought that didn't seem right!"  He leaned back out, and smiled
at her.

She nodded, and said to him, "I don't feel like dancing."

"Now, why would a pretty girl like you get all dressed up and come to a
dance club," he shouted, grabbing her shoulder when a passerby jostled
him, then righting himself by moving his hand to the bar, "excuse me!
just to sit around and not dance?"  His charming smile was combining
with the sticky drink in her belly to warm her unexpectedly.

She leaned in, and shouted, "My friend wanted to come."  She pointed
out to the dance floor, which was still packed with
shoulder-to-shoulder people dancing.  There was something about him,
beyond the eyes and the ears, that tickled at the back of her mind as
being not quite human.  She couldn't place it.  It would probably come
to her.

"That's very noble," he said, moving out of vocal range as someone
pressed past.  When he was able to get back close to her, he said,
"Would you like to continue this conversation outside, so we don't have
to shout?"

She nodded yes, but held up a finger, indicating she needed just a
moment.  She waded into the throng, and, finding Jenn, briefly told her
that she would be just outside, and would be back in a few minutes.  If
she wasn't back in 5 minutes, she said, send an "excuse" text.  Jenn
nodded, smiling knowingly at the dapper man standing by the bar, who
waved a sort of toodle-pip finger wave back at them.

They made their way out the door to the shockingly cold air of the
night outside.  Aurelia's ears rang in the sudden silence.  There was a
corded off smoking area in the alley which served as the entrance to
the club, and it was to this that they gravitated as being out of the
way.

The man in the suit offered his hand, and said, "Hello, my name's
Daniel."  Aurelia shook his hand, which seemed like an oddly formal
gesture, yet somehow matched with the man's suit and attitude.

"Hi, Daniel."  Aurelia paused, then said, "Call me Aurey."  She didn't
feel comfortable giving him her full real name for some reason.

He rolled the word around on his tongue, and smiled.  "That's an odd
but interesting name.  Pleased to meet you, Aurey."  He stood silent
for a moment before continuing.  "I just wanted to say hello to you in
a more congenial atmosphere.  Although the dance floor at Neighbors
certainly has its charms, ease of conversation is not among them."  His
voice had a faint accent that Aurelia couldn't place, vaguely European.

Before she could stop herself, Aurelia blurted out, "Are your ears
real?"

Daniel stopped short, and looked at her very strangely.  "What do you
mean?  Of course they're real, did you imagine I had cybernetic
replacement ears or something?  You're not one of those tiresome
'sci-fi' people, are you?"

"No, no.  I'm sorry, that was a weird thing to say.  Never mind me."

"Why did you ask?"  The strange look was gone from his face, and he was
back to his congenial faint smile.

"I... Never mind.  Thank you for the beer.  Oh, I left the beer inside.
Shit.  It'll probably be gone when I get back."

"Pay it no mind, I'd be happy to stand you another beer if you like.
When I said I'd buy your next drink, I didn't imagine you'd be ordering
the cheapest drink on the menu.  What do you do, Aurey?  What's your
avocation?"

"Oh, um."  Aurelia felt a flush creeping up her face, despite the cold
air.  She still hadn't really come to terms with being unemployed.  "I
used to be a receptionist at a law firm, but they had some kind of
Federal indictment, and shut down.  So I guess I don't do anything
right now.  Just people watching, and waiting for the next time."

"Tsk, you shouldn't wait around for life to happen to you, Aurey.
Forgive me for preaching, but you must take life by the horns and
force it to do your bidding.  It's a terrible waste of a life to wait
around for it to happen to you."

"That's... good point.  You're right.  I shouldn't just wait around.
I guess it was just a shock to be laid off like that, and it's really
easy to hang out on unemployment.  I haven't even looked for a new job
yet."

"Well, I don't mean to cause you undue guilt or trouble.  I am just
always shocked to see people letting things pass them by in idleness."

"What do you do?"  Aurelia tried to suppress the feeling that she was
being judged by this odd man in the bowler hat.

"I am a freelance artist.  I create art for a variety of clients.  You
may have seen some of my advertisements if you read the Stranger.  Or
if you attend galleries about town, you may have seen my charcoal or
pastel work."

"Oh, yeah, I probably have, then, in the Stranger.  That's cool.
I didn't know you could make money doing that."

He smiled and looked down modestly.  "Well, it takes work and practice,
and I've been doing it for a while.  I didn't make money at first; I
was a waiter, and practiced my art in my free time.  Art has always
been a passion of mine."

"Hey, so, why did you buy me a drink like that?  I mean," Aurelia
blushed, realizing what she was about to say was probably going to
sound very forward, "I thought you were gay."

"Oh, you flatter me.  No, I sometimes wish I was gay, but I am alas as
straight as they come.  You looked lonely, as I said before, and it
seemed a shame for a pretty girl like yourself to sit alone in a dance
club.  It was by way of introduction."

"Oh, well.  Thank you."  Aurelia dropped an odd, uncomfortable curtsey,
not sure why she did it.  Daniel's attitude and bearing seemed to
suggest that it was the right choice.

He laughed a short, delighted laugh.  "Oh my.  You truly are precious.
You're welcome.  I'm sure you're about to get a phone call or text
message calling you away from our little tete-a-tete, so I'll wrap it
up.  I am delighted to have met you, Aurey, and I would be honored if
you would consider joining me for dinner in the near future.  Here is
my contact information."  He handed her a glossy black business card
with elaborate red and blue filligree around the edges.  It said,
"Daniel Shaughnessey, Graphics and Design" with a phone number and
email address listed.  It was printed on heavy paper, and Aurelia
realized she was quite impressed by the man's presentation and manner.

"Thank you, Daniel.  I'm flattered.  I'll let you know."

"Of course," he said, bowing with a fluid motion.  "I shall excuse
myself for now.  Have a pleasant evening, Aurey, I look forward to
hearing from you soon."  With that, he turned and gracefully walked
back into the dance club, a wave of music washing out from the door as
it opened, and silencing again as the door swung shut.

Aurelia looked at the card in her hand, and swept her thumb across its
face, thoughtfully.  A date with a non-human.  She realized she was
smiling a satisfied smile, and composed her face as she tucked the card
into her bra for safe keeping, returning to the club herself.

Chapter

Aurelia and Jenn were walking back from the club, slowly.  It was only
about 5 blocks from Jenn's apartment, and 6 from Aurelia's, which was
slightly further up the hill, but further north.  They walked in
silence, Jenn very nearly steaming in the cold air.  Her coat was slung
over her arm, and she walked along happily in her little black dress
with fishnet stockings and high-heeled black boots.

"Thanks for coming with me, Aurey.  That was awesome.  I've been
needing that for a while.  I think I lost 5 pounds back there."  Jenn
turned a beatific smile on Aurelia and grabbed her friend's hand in her
own.  "Who was that guy you were talking to outside?"

"His name's Daniel.  He asked me out, and gave me his card."  She
fished it out and handed it to Jenn.  Jenn turned it over in her hand,
read it, and handed it back.

"Neat.  He was cute.  He wasn't gay?  I thought he was, dressed like
that."

"Me too.  I asked him, he said he wasn't.  I guess we'll find out."

"You gonna go out with him?"  Jenn's smile stopped being so beatific,
and became a bit more sly.

"I'm thinking about it.  He's an elf or something."

"What?  You mean like he's not human?"

"Yeah.  He's got long pointy ears, and his eyes are a freaky color of
green that I've never seen before.  It's like they glowed, almost."

"Ooh, that sounds juicy.  I wonder if elf dicks are different than
human ones."

"Jennifer S. Warren!  I'm not sleeping with him!"

"How do you know?"  Jenn's smile was completely sly now.

"I'm not ready yet.  I'm still not over Jason, and this whole second
sight thing is seriously distracting.  I don't think I'm about to jump
into the sack with someone who I know isn't human.  It seems like a bad
idea, on so many levels."

"Why are you going out with him, then?"  Jenn swung their joined hands
playfully in time with their steps.

"I guess I just want to know more about him.  I'm desperate to know if
he knows he's not human."

"Desperate, eh?"  Jenn could make just about anything sound sexual if
she put her mind to it.

"You know that's not what I mean.  I was thinking about it in the club,
and I need to figure out if the non-humans I see know they're not
human.  You see them as human, and so does everone else but me.  Maybe
I'm seeing what they really are, and they can't even see it.  It's
important."

They reached Jenn's apartment, and entered.  Sugar Cheeks the cat ran
up to them, and twined his way around Jenn's legs, pointedly raising
his tail at Aurelia.  Aurelia noticed a strong orange-yellow emotion
pattern coming off the cat, and wondered if that was the color for
kitty smugness.

Aurelia flopped down on the couch, gently enough that she didn't jar
her head or hip.  At least her face didn't hurt much any more.  It was
just the ugly rainbow of healing bruises.  Jenn called from the
kitchen, "You want anything?"

"No, I've had enough for tonight," said Aurelia.  She'd noticed that
since the night when she'd gotten the ring and her new perceptive
powers, she was much less interested in alcohol.  She'd still drink it,
but it didn't hold much appeal any more.  She wondered if that was just
due to what must have been nearly toxic levels of drunkenness of that
night, or if it had something to do with the second sight.


Jenn walked back in, with a tall glass of something red in her hand.
"You don't want water or anything?"  She set her drink down in the
coffee table, but remained standing to hear Aurelia's answer.

"Ah... No, I'm fine.  Sit down and rest your feet.  I can't believe you
dance in heels like that."

Jenn grinned, but nevertheless pulled off the soft black boots, dumping
them uncermoniously next to the sofa.  "Just used to it, I guess.  You
should dance more, Aurey, it's good for you."

"Yeah, so's yoga and being vegan."  Aurelia's voice was both amused and
dismissive.

"Oh, I like yoga.  Do you not like yoga?"

"What?  No, I guess I've never tried it.  Those skinny smug yoga girls
always kind of put me off it.  I didn't want to hang out with them
wearing skin-tight clothing."  Aurelia had been self-conscious about
her weight ever since Junior year, when her sorority sisters had
reacted so strongly to her gaining a few pounds.

"Whatever, you're beautiful Aurelia.  Anyway.  So, this guy.  I think
you should go out with him."  Jenn, Aurelia had realized many times,
didn't seem to have any body consciousness issues.

"Why?"

"Let me see if I can make a list your little brain will like.  He knows
how to dress himself, and he's not gay.  That's rare all by itself.  He
was interested.  He didn't look like a creep.  Did he act like a creep?
I didn't think so.  He's an artist," here Aurelia interrupted.

"Why would I want to go out with an artist?  They're poor and moody.
What if he turns out to be the type who goes crazy and cuts off his
ear?  Yuck."

"Artists are passionate and stuff.  Way better than dating some lame
computer programmer who cares about video games or football.  Anyway,
he's an artist," she paused, trying to remember where she was going
with her list.  "I guess that's it.  But he seemed cool."

"How do you know?  You saw him from a distance."

"You're not the only one with ESP, Aurey.  It's the way you talk about
him.  You're thinking of it, and I'm telling you to go with the
decision you already made, and aren't telling yourself about."

"What?  What makes you... God dammit.  How do you do that?"  Aurelia
wasn't actually upset, but made a faux-angry face at Jenn.  Jenn smiled
smugly and patted Aurelia's knee.

"Like I said, you're not the only one with ESP."

"It's not ESP anyway, it's second sight.  Isn't ESP like being able to
see the other sides of cards that are held up, or reading people's
minds or something?  I can't do any of that."

"Whatever, doesn't matter.  You should go out with him.  It's just a
date anyway, it's not like by going to dinner you're committing to a
years' long relationship with him.  A first date is just a 'get to know
you' event, nothing more."

Aurelia glowered at Jenn.  "You know that's not true.  Most guys seem
to think a first date is the only excuse they need to stick their
tongue down your throat."

"What's wrong with that?  It's a good way to get to know someone."
Jenn took a sip of her drink and smiled at Aurelia.  "You need to
loosen up.  Do you really think Mr. Fancy Suit is going to jump you
after one date?  I bet he's one of those guys who needs a fancy
invitation to actually consider holding your hand.  Sweet, but guh.
Who needs that?"

"He said something interesting to me," said Aurelia, changing the topic
slightly.  "He said I should stop waiting for life to come to me, or
something like that."

"That's true.  You've been sitting around moping like a Mopey
McMoperson since you got laid off.  You should get up and do something.
Look for a job, or look for a boyfriend, or figure out what the hell
your new superpower means, or something."

"Jenn, you say that like I haven't even... Never mind.  I found out
some stuff about my 'new superpower'," Aurelia made a goofy face as she
said the words, " anyway.  It's all this Scottish folklore stuff.
Like, real old fairy tales and things.  Second sight was this sort of
magic power women had, and they used it to influence the minds of men."
She made a sci-fi theremin sound effect and waggled her fingers in the
air, then giggled at herself.

"Ooh, maybe you could influence Mr. Fancy Suit to sweep you off your
feet and set you up in a life of luxury."  Jenn's eyes glowed with the
thought.

"I don't think that's how they influenced the minds of men.  Anyway, he
was kind of poncey, don't you think?"

"I don't even know what that word means."

"It means, like, upper class and snooty and stuck up, sort of.  I
think.  They use it in British shows."

Jenn rolled her eyes.  "Like Dr. Who?"

"Yes, like Dr. Who."  Aurelia slapped Jenn's shoulder slightly.  "I
still don't know why you won't watch that with me.  You'd love it."
Aurelia sighed, and felt the energy drain out of her after the long
evening.

"Why the heavy sigh, Mopey?"  Jenn playfully shoved Aurelia, who rocked
back and forth from the push like a doll on a spring.

"Nothing, just realized how tired I am.  I think all that loud music
really took it out of me.  Although it's tempting to crash on your
couch and wake up with a face full of cat ass, I think I'm gonna head
home.  Whaddaya think?"

"I think you're deserting me in the hour of my need."

"What need?  You're sitting on your own couch, practically oozing
contented sighs, with a drink in your hand.  That sounds like the
opposite of need to me."

"Pff.  Whatever.  You'll be sad when you wake up and realize I've gone
goth on you from being abandoned."

"Oh, hah-hah.  You're as goth as Lady Gaga is quiet and unassuming."

"She totally is," said Jenn.  "I read about it.  It's all just a front
to sell concert tickets.  Ok.  If you're gonna puss out and go to
sleep, at least give me a hug."  Jenn stood, and Aurelia followed.
They embraced, Jenn's face pressed into Aurelia's neck, with their
nearly 9" height difference.  "I love you, girl," said Jenn.

"I love you too.  Don't go all goth on me from being abandoned.  I'll
be back, and maybe I'll even feel like dancing."

"That will be a red-letter day if that happens, won't it.  What does
that even mean?  Never mind.  Go home.  I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Aurelia gathered her few things, and made the short walk home.

Chapter

Aurelia was back at the library, hoping to run into Stuart again.
She'd been thinking about him, and thinking how much she wanted to know
about the other mythical things that seemed to be not so mythical at
all.  Her searches online had proven unsatisfying, frequently verging
into new-agey crap that made her soul hurt in a sort of profound way.
There was an astounding amount of information available on the
internet, but so much of it was garbage.

She went up to the librarian on duty, who was yet a different person
from the last two visits, and asked, "Hey, do you know Stuart?  Sort of
a skinny guy with thick glasses who's in here a lot?"  The librarian, a
balding, slightly overweight man in his early 30s, nodded yes.  "Has he
been in today?"

"Hmm.  I haven't seen him, but that doesn't mean too much.  I just
started about 20 minutes ago.  Let me go ask Megan."  He strode off and
consulted with someone, once briefly looking back at Aurelia.  She was
suddenly self-conscious, standing alone with her shoulder bag and grey
wool coat.  She took off her knitted hat and toyed with it for a moment
before jamming it into her bag.  The man came back, and said, "Megan
hasn't seen him yet.  I don't think he's been in today.  He's here most
days, though.  Why do you ask?"

"I was hoping to talk to him about some mythology questions I had.  He
seems super knowledgeable."

"That he is.  I've never seen anyone go quite as whole-hog into their
studies like he has.  Seems like every time I see him, he's reading a
different book, and almost always about mythology.  He'll either end up
with a useless Ph.D. or go on to write the sweetest video games ever."
The man smiled to himself at the thought.  "You want me to pass a
message to him if I see him?"

Aurelia thought for a moment.  "No, I think I'll do some reading of my
own.  Maybe he'll show up."

"Ok, if I see him, I'll tell him you were looking for him.  What's your
name?"

"Oh, um, Aurelia.  I don't know if he'll remember me or not."

"That kid interacts with books all day.  I'd sure remember you if I
were him."

Aurelia smiled uncomfortably, not very happy with the slightly creepy
leer on the librarian's face.  It wasn't accompanied by any visible
emotion stuff, so she supposed it was a reflexive action on his part,
and not an intentionally creepy look.  She said her thanks and wandered
off to the reference section she'd been in before.  She pulled out a
selection of books and sat down.

It was hard to get motivated to read.  What she wanted to be doing was
talking, not reading dry words in a dry book.  She tried, though, and
managed a few sentences before giving up.  The plight of the Picts
simply wasn't grabbing her today, although the drawings of their symbol
stones were interesting.  She looked them over instead of subjecting
herself to the text.

She became aware, again, of being watched.  She looked up, and wasn't
terribly surprised to find Stuart standing a little way off, looking
uncertain of himself.  On seeing her look up, he walked forward.  His
baseline emotional turmoil wasn't very strong today, she saw.

"Hi!" she said, beaming brightly at him.  His blue-green sprouted like
steam, although he was able to keep his face fairly neutral.

"Hi.  Were you looking for me?"

"I was.  Sit down.  I wanted to talk to you about mythology again, if
you don't mind."  She kept smiling at him.  "We could even go sit
outside if you want, it's actually sunny today."  This caused a spike
of a nearly white-pink color she hadn't seen before, and he nodded his
assent.  Aurelia said, "Great!" and dropped her books on the cart
before they headed out the door.

"What kind of mythology do you want to talk about?" he asked, as they
walked.  The sun was indeed shining brightly, and Aurelia chose a spot
on the brick steps that was nearly facing into the sun.  She sat, and
he followed suit, looking uncertain.

"I want to know about fairies."

"What kind of fairies?"

"I'm not sure.  Like, do fairies fly?  I read in some book (I've read
like twenty different books at this point, they all blur together in my
head) that the idea of fairies flying was an invention of the Victorian
era.  Is that right?  Or did they actually fly?"

"Well, they didn't actually do anything -- they're not real.  But in
the old stories, no, they don't fly, at least not with wings.  They do
fly, but more like witches popularly do, riding brooms or sticks, or in
saucers."  The image of a fairy flying in a saucer made Aurelia smile
and stifle a giggle.  "Or cups, or teapots, or kettles.  They flew in
something like men went in boats, so I think that was the parallel that
was being drawn."

"So, fairies didn't have giant wings like a bat or anything?"

"No, that sounds more like an Italian devil character than a fairy.
Like, black bat wings?"

"Well, no, more... like, friendly than that.  Not devilish."

"Not that I've heard of.  Where did you hear about a fairy like that?"
He looked like he was ready to whip out a notebook and take notes as an
anthropologist following up on a new story.

"Oh, I..."  Aurelia was suddenly uncomfortable.  She didn't want to
lie, but to say, "I met him," sounded so undeniably crazy that she
couldn't bring herself to say it.  "I heard about it somewhere," she
finished, lamely.

"Interesting.  There have certainly been more modern stories which
depicted fairies with wings.  Ever since the Victorian era, it's part
of the popular conception.  Although I don't think I've ever heard of
friendly bat wings before.  I'll have to ask Professor Marley when I
see her next."  At this point, he did actually pull out his phone, and
thumb-type a note to himself on the little virtual keyboard.  "You
don't remember where you heard about this?"

"No, I guess I don't.  Sorry.  Must have just heard it somewhere."

"Huh, oh well."  Aurelia had seen, but hadn't really noted, that the
white-pink color was increasing until she finally realized she couldn't
see Stuart in the cloud of emotion.  Suddenly, he was inexpertly
jamming his face into hers, and she found herself the recipient of a
poorly-placed and uncomfortably sloppy kiss.

Shocked, she didn't know how to react for a moment, then pushed him
back.  "No!" she said, without thinking.  "What are you doing?"  She
wasn't mad, but she was confused and surprised.

Stuart's face flushed bright red, his eyes visibly filling with tears,
and he actually sprinted away across Red Square, trailing black-tinged
dark brown emotion stuff.  Aurelia half-heartedly called out, "Wait, no,
that's not..." but he was out of earshot.  Aurelia said, under her breath,
"Shit."  She stood, and wandered, slightly dazed, back to her bus stop.

Chapter

That night, Aurelia again found herself unable to sleep.  This time, it
wasn't scratching noises or strange dreams keeping her up.  She was
going over her interactions with Stuart, trying to figure out what had
happened, and what she could have done differently.  It wasn't a
productive set of thoughts, but she couldn't stop looping over them,
every time through kicking herself for being so blind (doubly so, with
her second sight).  She should have seen it coming.  She'd had to fend
off a half-dozen similar attempts in junior high and high school, and
thought (incorrectly, but time blurs these things) that this was the
worst she'd ever handled it.

Finally breaking free of the cycle for a moment, she sat up in bed, and
turned on the light.  Her apartment was a mess, and the floor was
littered with dirty laundry she hadn't had the initiative to do in the
last week.  She found her phone, and stared at the little screen,
pondering what she wanted to do.  What she wanted to do was call Jenn
and tell her all about it, but it seemed like such a juvenile thing to
be worked up about.  Unattractive boy attempts to kiss girl.  Not
exactly earth-shattering news.  She felt like that was a waste of a
phone call.  She set the phone down again.

She clicked the light off again, and lay back down on the bed.  It
didn't help.  She was still wide awake, and staring up at the slanting
lines from the light outside.  She wondered what would happen if that
light ever burned out.  It hadn't yet, and she'd been here for two
years.

Suddenly, her attention was sharply focused.  A clearly-outlined shadow
had moved across the slanting lines, and it wasn't an earthly animal.
She sat up quickly in bed, hugging the comforter to her.  Then she felt
silly for the reaction, and instead grabbed the little iron knife the
dream-woman had given her.  It glinted dully in the dim light reflected
off the ceiling, as she pulled off the newsprint sheath.

She stalked silently into the living room, all her senses alert.
Nothing looked out of place.  She switched on the light, and scanned
the room.  Nothing seemed unusual.  She stalked around the room once,
peering carefully into corners and windows.  When she came around to
the far side of the couch, something caught her eye; some movement.
She stared at the spot -- it was behind the couch.  She moved swiftly
to the couch, and tugged it away from the wall.  Something scampered
away, and it was far larger than a mouse.  Part of her mind remarked on
how very calm she was.  She leapt onto the couch and across, landing
hard on the other side.  Whatever it was, it wasn't moving.  She looked
carefully about, but couldn't see it.

"What are you?  Come out.  If I find you, we'll find out what iron does
to you.  If you show yourself, we'll see.  Where are you?"  She waited
silently, wondering if the implied threat would have any effect.  She
held the little knife in front of her as she waited.

The she spotted it.  There was a tiny pair of feet just visible under
the low shelf of the coffee table, a terrible second- or third-hand
Ikea job.  She quickly shoved the table aside, which toppled it as the
legs caught on the low carpet, and exposed a little man.  He was
wearing a bright red coverall sort of garment and had a strange
crown-like felt hat on his head.  His feet were bare, and he had
straggly hair that was a strange grey-blond color.  He scrabbled at the
ground, trying to get to his feet, but Aurelia was quicker, and she
pressed the folded-over end of the knife's handle against the little
man's chest.

She became distracted suddenly by the realization that she was dressed
only in a loose t-shirt and panties, and tugged the shirt down with
her free hand.  The little man struggled, fear plain in his eyes at the
knife poking out of her closed fist.  She pressed harder, pressing the
handle into his chest.  On closer inspection, he looked like he was
quite old, and Aurelia felt a sudden twinge of guilt at attacking him
like that.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice sounding fiercer than she'd
expected.  "What are you doing in here?"

The little man said something Aurelia didn't understand, his face both
scared and rebellious, then he said, "Why you attack me!?  I no hurt
you.  Move iron from me witch woman!"  She realized that he was
actually pinned and couldn't move, and she didn't think it was because
of her superior strength.

"Answer me!  Who are you?  What are you doing in my apartment?"

The man rolled his eyes.  "I this place brownie.  You no leave milk out."
This last was said with a certain amount of accusation in his voice.
He looked back down at her hand, and said again, "You move iron from
me?"

"No.  Not yet.  What do you mean, brownie?  What does that mean?"

The man rolled his eyes again, apparently a favored expression.  "You
go read in fancy book.  Brownie clean, make nice, but only if you leave
milk.  You no leave milk..."  He trailed off, once again focusing on
the knife.  He had said it as if he was about to list the consequences
of not leaving milk out, then changed his mind.  His accent was weird,
placing emphasis in spots Aurelia didn't expect to hear them.

"Why are you here?  I mean, why my apartment?"

"Hey," he said, his eyes suddenly narrowing, "how you see me?  Witches
all dead."

"Not me.  Anyway, I'm not a witch.  And I can see you."  Aurelia
suddenly had a sense that she was being watched, and looked up.  There
was no one else visible, but she felt like there were multiple pairs of
eyes on her.  "Who else is here?"

He made a noise that sounded like, "Waugh!" and was clearly an
expression of exasperation.  "Who you think.  Go read in fancy book.
House sprites, brownies, we all still here.  You not believe, but we
still here."  With this, he kicked his little legs up, and knocked
Aurealia's hand away for a moment.  He leapt up and bolted toward a
corner.  Aurelia followed his movements, but couldn't see where he
ended up.

From the floor, she heard a loud knocking, followed by a shouted, "Keep
it down up there!"

Chapter


Aurelia found herself looking at a door again.  She recognized it, it
was the plain door.  She knew what would happen next.  She opened it,
and her mother was waiting for her.  She smiled, and said, "Keep
going."  Aurelia did.  There was the room with the portraits.  She
headed straight for the door, feeling like she was an old hand at this.
She passed through the other rooms and the heather, and entered the hut
of the dream-woman.

She waited, stirring her cauldron slowly.  Her hair was up in a tight
bun, more composed than last time.  She spoke again in the same odd
language, and again Aurelia remembered the interactions in English.

"You're late," she said, still staring into the cauldron.

"Who are you?"  Aurelia saw that she was again dressed in a woolen
dress like she'd never seen before.

"No matter.  You're late.  Look."  She pulled the wooden spoon out of
the pot, and gestured at the contents.  Aurelia leaned over the pot,
which was warming on dim red coals.  She couldn't see at first, but her
eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and she could see the slowly
bubbling surface of the cauldron.  It looked like liquid, probably some
kind of soup or stew.

"I don't know what I should be looking at."  She looked over at the old
woman's face, which was quite close now.  She had deep lines in her
face, and her grey eyes were hard under a sharp brow.  She looked at
Aurelia, and frustration or disgust briefly registered on her face
before she looked down.

The woman made a brief "Tch" noise, then directed Aurelia's attention
back to the bubbling surface.  "Don't look with your eyes."  She
stirred the pot once, gently, almost as if lovingly caressing a child.

Aurelia looked back, trying to remember that feeling of suddenly using
her second sight instead of her eyes.  It wouldn't come.  "I can't,"
she said.  Her voice expressed her sadness and frustration.

She thought for a moment the woman was going to rap her knuckles with
the spoon, like a nun in a bad movie about Catholic school.  She
relented, though, and said, "Look at me girl.  Stand so."  She put her
hands on Aurelia's arms.  They were cool and hard.  "Relax.  Calm.
Look at me.  Don't think on it.  Now, calm, look back.  Do you see?"

Aurelia looked back, and there was... something, she could see.  It was
a pattern in the flow.  It formed almost geometrical shapes, and,
fascinated, Aurelia looked harder.  They suddenly disappeared, and she
stood up, looking confused.  The woman said nothing, just standing
there.  Aurelia looked down again, but it was just a pot of stew.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking back up at the woman.

The woman blew a breath out through her nose.  She grabbed Aurelia's
arm in a steely grip, and marched her outside.  Without a word, they
marched off through the darkness.  They didn't have to walk as far this
time, and soon came to the perfectly round hill she'd seen before, with
the single tree on top.  "Oh," said Aurelia, recognizing it
immediately.

"She's coming."  The woman gestured at the hillock as if that should be
enough information for Aurelia to understand her meaning.  Seeing
Aurelia's look of confusion, she relented, exasperated, and said, "The
old woman.  She's awake, and she's returning.  You'd best learn to
see."

"I don't know how," said Aurelia, plaintively.  She wanted desperately
to know how, but couldn't figure it out.

The woman said something under her breath, and set off at the same
breakneck walk back to the hut.  When they arrived, she pulled a small
bag out of a dark area, and rooted around inside it.  Pulling out
something small, she handed it to Aurelia.  In the dim light, it was
hard to make out, but it felt like a rock, worn smooth somehow.

"What is it?  Is it magic?"

The woman huffed again, and said, "The magic's in you, girl."

Aurelia was awake, and opened her eyes to see the light on the ceiling.
The clock read 4:32.  Aurelia rolled over, and discovered a hard lump
underneath her.  She was unsurprised to pull out a small, smooth stone.

Chapter


That morning, Aurelia waited until she thought Jenn would be awake, and
dialed her number.  The phone rang through to voicemail, and before she
could decide what she wanted to say, the tone sounded.  She said,
hesitantly, "Hey Jenn, it's me.  You free today some time?  I want to
talk, things are weird.  I'm ok, just things are weird."  She ended the
call, and set the phone down again.  "Crap," she said to herself.

Stuart; the dream woman; Daniel; the hillock and the "old woman" she'd
been warned about; her ability to see; all swirled around in her head,
unsolveable problems.  She didn't know what to do.

She pulled out the little stone, and examined it again.  It was indeed
rubbed smooth, and was a startlingly beautiful deep brown color,
bisected by a thick ribbon of clear quartz.  It was a sort of rounded,
squashed cube shape, irregular, but pleasing in her hand.  It was just
the right size to be enclosed in a fist: smaller than an egg, but not
so small as to get lost in her hand.  She wondered about the dream
woman's comment: the magic's in you, girl.

She set the stone down again, and got up from the bed.  The mess in the
apartment was finally too much for her, and she started picking things
up, putting them away, organizing where there hadn't been organization
before, and generally making her domicile livable again.  It wasn't a
conscious thought, but doing simple labor allowed her to think about
things without obsessing.

After an hour of cleaning, which had gone from picking up clothes and
putting away dishes to actually wiping down surfaces and scrubbing the
toilet, her head was a little clearer.  She'd just have to see what
happened with Stuart, but she thought she could handle that.  She
wanted to talk more about her sight and dreams, and assuming he could
be trusted not to freak out on her again, he seemed like a good person
to talk to.  As for Daniel, she thought to herself that she was still
undecided, while simultaneously cursing Jenn for her insight, and
knowing that she was right: Aurelia would be going on a date with
Daniel.  She decided she didn't know enough about the "old woman" and
the hillock to make any decisions. The dream woman was frustratingly
terse and vague, although that did seem to be the way with dreams.

With the apartment cleaner, and her head cleared out a bit, Aurelia
felt better.  With a curious smile on her face, she poured a little bit
of milk into a small plate from her mismatched collection of
thrift-store plates, and left it out on the counter.  She wondered what
would happen, torn between her rational belief that it would go bad,
and the practical reality that she'd just pinned a foot-tall old man on
her floor with the handle of a knife given to her in a dream, and that
he'd accused her of not leaving out a saucer of milk for him.

She got dressed for the day, contenting herself with a pair of jeans
that didn't seem too dirty (laundry would have to wait, she had decided
while cleaning -- the dreary traipse up and down the stairs to the
laundry machines in the basement seemed insurmountable, and she wasn't
sure she could put her hands on enough quarters in any case), a long
black sweater with baggy sleeves, a bright turquoise and pink patterned
scarf wrapped around her neck, and a black pair of Chucks.  She pulled
her hair back into a high pony tail, pulled on her jacket, and headed
for the library to see if she could find Stuart, or at least leave him
a message.

Chapter

Stuart hadn't been in yet today, said the librarian, the blue-haired
woman Aurelia had met before.  Aurelia was glad the balding guy wasn't
there.  It was still early, though, only 10 am.  The librarian asked
how her search was going, and Aurelia gave her a vague answer that
satisfied politeness without actually imparting any information.  She
wasn't really in the mood to do more reading, and figured that engaging
the librarian in a conversation about mythology, fairies, or second
sight would just lead to another dozen books in her hands.

"Oh, hey," said the librarian, "there's a documentary series called
'Bannockburn and Thistle,' which is about folklore in the Scottish
Highlands, I ran across it the other day, and thought of you.  I don't
know if it'll cover your areas of interest exactly, but you might want
to check it out.  It's in the DVD collection.  You want the number?"

Aurelia considered for a moment, then said, "Sure, why not."  The
librarian rattled off a Dewey Decimal number, and Aurelia jotted it
down on a piece of scrap paper from the pile.  "Thanks.  Hey, if I
leave a message for Stuart with you, could you get it to him?"

"Yeah, sure.  Or I can email it to him for you," she said.  

"Oh.  No, if you could just give him a note when you see him, I thnk
that'd be better."

"No problem."  She looked expectantly at Aurelia.

"Oh!  It's not written yet.  Sorry.  I'll write it out, give me a
minute."

"Gotcha.  Let me know."  The librarian turned back to her computer, and
started typing.

Aurelia sat down at a table, and opened a notebook she pulled from her
bag.  She thought for a moment, and started writing.

"Stuart," she wrote.

"I apologize if I was misleading to you in some way.  I'm sure you're a
delightful person, but I don't know you well enough to know that yet.
I'm interested in continuing our conversation about mythology if you're
willing to.  I'd love to be able to contact you some way other than by
stopping in at Suzzallo in person.  If you want, send me an email to
aurey89@gmail.com, or you can find me on Facebook.  I hope we can be
friends.

"Sincerely, Aurelia Stanton"

She folded the paper over, wrote "Stuart" on the outside, and walked back
up to the desk.  The blue-haired librarian looked up and smiled at her
as she handed the paper over.  "Thanks," said Aurelia.  She stood for a
moment, not sure what to do now.  The note felt inadequate, and a bit
like a cop-out.  She wanted to talk to him, rather than leave an
impersonal note.  She turned back to the librarian, and said, "I don't
suppose you could give me Stuart's email address, or phone number,
could you?"

The librarian smiled, and said, "I'm sorry, I can't.  The offer stands
if you want me to email this to him, though."

"No, that's ok.  Thanks."  Aurelia turned and walked out the door into
the overcast Wednesday air.  What to do now?  She didn't feel like
doing anything.

Chapter

Rather than get on the bus back to home, Aurelia decided to splurge and
eat lunch out.  The U Disrict was packed with good restaurants, and she
wandered up the Ave scoping out her options.  She wandered past windows
full of fascinating clothing she couldn't afford, and little run-down
shops selling imported Indian wares, wafting incense onto the street.
The restaurant options were seemingly endless, and she wandered the
length of the Ave twice before finally settling on the Aladdin, a
sketchy-looking but delicious Middle Eastern restaurant decked out with
colorful woven rugs on the walls.

She ordered, and took her number to find a table.  The restaurant was
empty.  It was early for lunch, and Aurelia plopped down behind one of
the tables in the section under a giant draped multicolored fabric
tent-like structure.  She fiddled with the number sign for a moment,
then pulled out her phone to check into Facebook and Twitter.

She was thus engaged when her food arrived, carried by a swarthy man
with a moustache.  His nose, Aurelia realized, was more than just
hooked and hawk-like -- he actually had feathers intermingled with his
hair, and his eyes were the eyes of a bird of prey.  His hands, as he
delivered the food, bore a passing resemblance to claws with talons.
He smiled at her, and as she looked up to face him and say thank you,
his face changed.

"Who did this to you?" he asked, his face now serious.  He had a
noticeable Arabic accent.

"What?"

He waved his hand over his own eye, to indicate her black eye.  "I
will find him and pay him back, if you like.  No one should hit a
woman, ever."  His aspect was suddenly frightening, and she realized he
wasn't kidding.  He was offering to beat someone up, or worse, on her
say-so.

"Oh, no.  It was a mugger.  They, ah... they got him.  He won't be
doing it again.  I'm alright.  Thanks."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure, thanks.  Believe me, he won't be doing it again."  Feeling
thrilled, like she was participating in some kind of secret cult sign,
she confirmed no one else was around, and drew her finger across her
neck while making a "gakk!" noise.

The man smiled, and a warm rosey not-light emanated off him.  "Good,"
he said, and turned, returning to his foodly duties.  A bit shocked at
her own audacity, Aurelia attacked her gyro with a vengeance.  She
could hear an animated male voice in another room speaking in a guttural
language she couldn't understand.

Chapter

Aurelia's phone rang.  It was Jenn.

"Hey Aurey, sorry I didn't call back until now.  Shit still weird?"

"Oh, yeah, but I worked some of it out.  My place is cleaner, and I
figured out some of what was going on."

"Glad to hear it.  I was at work early today, they're having some kind
of conference, lots of guys in polo shirts running around.  I think I
actually have a bruise on my ass from being pinched so many times.  Why
does anyone think that's some kind of a turn-on or something?  Men are
so fucking annoying."

"Ugh, sorry to hear it."  Aurelia put down the smooth brown stone,
which she'd been looking at before the phone rang.  "For what it's
worth, I think it's probably *those* men who are annoying."

"Yeah, probably.  Whatever, I don't want to talk about men right now."

"Oh?"

"Oh, no," said Jenn, replying to the unspoken, "What else about men is
annoying you?" question in Aurelia's voice.  "I'm just tired and ready
to relax.  Wanna hang out tonight?  I was thinking of streaming Jersey
Shore."

"Sure, I guess.  I don't see what you see in that show, but I'm up for
hanging out."

"It's hilarious and stupid.  I dunno, I just like it.  Come over
whenever you want, I should be home in like half an hour.  You had
dinner yet?"

They ironed out their dinner plans, and Aurelia knocked on Jenn's door
45 minutes later, grocery bag in hand.

They worked together, chopping vegetables and cheese and chicken, layering
together a simple lasagne, which soon smelled divine from inside Jenn's
little oven.  The conversation soon veered to the weirdness in
Aurelia's life.

"So, weird thing one: you know that kid I was telling you about at the
library, the super-nerd with the glasses?"

"Yeah.  He sounds kind of annoying."

"He's not annoying.  He's just shy.  He knows a ton about mythology.
I'm hoping he can help me figure out this second sight thing.  Anyway,
we were talking about something, and I said we should go sit in the
sun.  We were only talking for a minute or two when I see see he's
almost disappeared behind a sort of whitish, pinkish emotion cloud, and
suddenly he plants a totally awkward kiss on me.  Ugh.  Slobber and
everything.  It's like he read about kissing, and wanted to try it on a
real girl."

"Ew!" said Jenn, contorting her face to express her displeasure at the
thought.  "That's totally gross.  He should know you're out of his
league.  What?  You are, that's not even a question."

"I'm not talking about leagues.  I don't want to scare him off or
anything, I feel like he's a link to what I need to know."

"There must be other people out there who can talk to you about
mythology, or books you can read, or something.  You don't need this
little nerd mackin' on you."  Jenn's voice was dismissive.

"Probably, but still, not the point.  I went to the library today and
left him a note.  It felt like a cop-out, but I guess I'll see how he
responds.  I feel like I did something wrong."  Aurelia's voice carried
a hint of despair.

"You didn't do anything wrong, other than being beautiful.  Don't look
at me like that, you know what I mean.  You're a pretty girl.  He's a
nerdy boy who sounds like he lives in his mom's basement playing
Warcraft.  The fact that he tried to make out with you at a totally
inappropriate time and with no sign from you is not your fault.  You
weren't making eyes at him or anything, were you?"

"No!  We were just talking.  It was all so sudden."  Aurelia's face was
downcast.

"Well, don't beat yourself up about it.  It's not your fault.  Believe
me.  I've had to push way too many men away when they get all handsy.
It's not like I'm some playground ride or something, and neither are
you.  If guys choose to treat us that way, it's their loss when we
smack them to the ground.  You did the right thing, but don't encourage
him."

"I'm not encouraging him.  I just want to talk to him again."  Aurelia
got up to check on the lasagne, which had caused the entire apartment
to smell delicious at this point.

"He may see that as permission to keep going, you know," Jenn called
into the kitchen.  "I knew this one guy in high school.  He thought any
interaction more positive than 'fuck off' meant we were going steady.
What a loser.  I ended up having to sick the principal on him, he just
wouldn't leave me alone."

"That sucks," said Aurelia, dropping down onto the couch again.
"Almost done."

"God, it smells amazing.  I'm starving.  I should have asked you to get
something to snack on before, I forgot how long it would take to cook."

"You'll survive.  It'll only be another five minutes in the oven,
probably."

"Yeah but then we'll have to wait for it to cool down."

"We can just put it in the fridge.  It'll cool down a lot faster that
way."

Jenn smiled at Aurelia.  "You're a freakin' genius, you know that?"

Aurelia huffed on her nails and polished them on her shirt.  "I know
it."

"So," said Jenn, looking back at Aurelia, "nerd problem down.  You're
awesome, he's a nerd.  Deal with it.  What else is weird?"

"Well, you know about one of those things: that guy I met at the club
last weekend.  I just need to say yes and figure out when we go out.
I figured that one out this morning."

"Sure, duh.  I told you that days ago.  Go on."  Jenn's delivery was
matter-of-fact, belying the smile that lurked just below the surface.

"The rest of them are pretty weird.  I told you about that dream where
I seemed to go back in time, and kept running into women, right?  Where
I was in that hut, and saw the fairies dancing on the hillside?"

"Yeah.  Weird, but that was weeks ago.  Is that still bugging you?"

"No, it happened again.  Last night.  I went to the same place, and the
same dream woman in the same hut tried to get me to see something in
this pot she was boiling on the fire.  I couldn't do it, though, and
she showed me this little hill I dreamed about a while ago too.  Like,
exactly the same thing.  I don't think they're really dreams.  They're
too real, too specific...."  Aurelia trailed off, obviously reluctant
to say whatever came next.

"Well, spit it out, girlfriend.  What are they then?"

"I don't know, but... I didn't tell you this before, but that
dream-woman gave me something, and when I woke up, I still had it."
Aurelia braced herself as if for an impact.

Jenn sat silently, looking at her friend, a blank expression on her
face.  Finally, after a minute of this, she blinked, slowly, once, and
said, "What."

"I know.  It's super weird.  I've... kind of gotten used to the idea,
though.  The first time, she gave me a knife.  She said iron was
important, and not to forget it.  When I woke up, I was saying the word
for iron in that weird language she speaks, and the knife was still in
my hand.  It's fucking sharp, too."

"I hate to say it now, Aurey, but that's crazy.  I know I said it was
cool that you were seeing fairies and stuff, but taking things back
with you from a dream?  How would that even work?"  Jenn's expression,
voice and even her posture on the couch bespoke skepticism.

"I don't know.  I have no idea how it could work.  But it did.  I mean,
it does.  It happened again last night."

"What did you get last night?  A sword?"

"No, a rock."

"A rock."

"Yeah," said Aurelia, handing over the brown and quartz stone to Jenn.
Jenn took it without speaking, and turned it over in her hand.

"Pretty," she said.  She handed it back.  Aurelia took it with her left
hand, and Jenn's hand lingered on hers.  "You should wear that ring on
a different finger," she said, looking at the ring the fairy had given
her.  "It looks like you're married."

"That didn't seem to stop Daniel."

"Who?"

"That guy from the club, with the suit."

"Oh, right.  True.  Minus points for him, I guess."

"Anyway, if I take it off I get all unhappy after a while.  I think
part of its magic," she was interrupted by Jenn at this point.

"Magic?"

"Well, whatever.  Effect.  Magic.  Something.  It makes me unhappy not
to wear it."

"Does it fit on any other fingers?"

Aurelia paused, looking at her left hand.  "I dunno, I've never tried."
She pulled the ring off and shifted it around.  It fit every finger
perfectly.  "Huh," she said, looking with puzzlement at her fingers.

"What?"

"It... fits every finger just right."

"Ok, so chalk up another weird thing.  Can I try?"

Aurelia considered for a moment.  "I don't see why not."  She pulled
the ring off and handed it to Jenn, who held it up to the light and
examined it.

"It just looks like a ring.  Not even a very good one, kind of beat
up."

"Yeah... I have a feeling it's kind of old."

"Like, vintage?  Is it worth a lot?"

"No, more like, ancient.  Like, it should probably be in a museum, sort
of thing."

"Huh," said Jenn, trying it on a finger.  It hung loosely on her
finger, many sizes too big.  She tried it on a different finger with
similar results.  She handed it back to Aurelia, grabbing her hand and
putting their palms together.  "Your hand is bigger than mine, but your
fingers aren't bigger around.  I think your fingers are actually
skinnier than mine.  How the hell does that work?"

Aurelia put the ring on her finger.  It fit perfectly.  "I have no
idea.  Weird.  I guess it is kind of magical."  She left it on the
middle finger of her left hand, so she wouldn't look like she was
married.

Jenn chuckled under her breath, then said, "Yeah.  Looks like.  So,
magic ring, check.  I guess all those Disney movies weren't so crazy
after all.  Let me know if you run into singing candlesticks or
anything."

"Nothing like that.  Man.  Ok.  That's weird."  Aurelia stared at the
ring on her finger.

"Ok, so your life has got some weird shit in it from dreams and stuff.
Is that a problem, or is it just adding to the weird quotient in your
life?"

"Weird quotient?"  Aurelia looked over non-existant eyeglasses at Jenn.

"Hey, I'm no dumb blonde.  I know big words."

"Pff.  Right.  So the problem is that what the dream-woman seemed to be
saying was that I wasn't ready for... something.  An old woman or
something."

"A different old woman?"

"Yeah, she wasn't talking about herself."

At this point, the timer beeped, and both women retired to the kitchen.
Aurelia pulled the lasagne out of the oven.  It was mostly golden brown,
with slightly blackened edges.  "Oh my god," said Jenn.  "That looks
freaking amazing.  Good idea, this is way better than frozen burritos
and Jersey Shore."

"Let's leave it out a little bit, I don't want to melt the wires in
your shelves."  Aurelia gestured toward the refrigerator.

"Oh yeah.  Damn.  I'm starving.  I'm just gonna..." Jenn grabbed a fork
and carefully wound a little bit of molten cheese onto it before
popping it into her mouth.  She danced around suddenly, saying "Hot.
Hot. Hot. Hot." around the mouthful.  Aurelia stifled a giggle behind
her hand.

"Don't hurt yourself."

"Shut up, this is delicious and hot.  Mostly hot.  Ok, keep going,"
said Jenn, gesturing Aurelia back out into the living room.  They left
the pan of pasta cooling on a couple of hotpads on the countertop.

"So, anyway, this old woman.  I mean, not the dream woman, but the one
I have to be ready for.  I'm supposed to know how to see (which
obviously means second sight) to be ready for her.  In the dream, it's
really hard.  I mean, in real life, I can't seem to stop unless I'm
super distracted or something."

"So you're set, then."

"I don't know, maybe?  That's the problem.  I don't think I'd keep
having this dream if I was set.  I don't think she'd keep giving me
things.  I think I could be in trouble, but I don't know what kind of
trouble, or how to deal with it."

"Why don't you ask the dream woman?"

"I... guess I don't think about it in the dream.  You know how you can
only do certain things in dreams?  I think I forget I have the option
or something."

"Ok, so why does she keep giving you things?"  Jenn unconsciously put
her hand to her chin, adopting the pose of an analyst.

"I suppose to help me out.  I'm not sure.  I mean, I assume she's
trying to help me, but I guess I don't know that.  Maybe the old woman
she's talking about is my actual ally, and this dream-woman is an
enemy."

"Why do they have to be either?  It's not like you're in a fight with
anyone."

"I guess just because that's how the dream-woman has phrased it.  I
don't know."  She looked at the brown rock, which she was turning over
in her hand.  "I wonder what this thing is supposed to do."

"Is it magical?  Like your ring, maybe?"  Jenn gestured for the rock,
and Aurelia passed it to her.  Jenn turned it over and over, looking at
it from every angle.  "I guess it's pretty, but it doesn't look
magical."

"How can you tell?"

"I don't know, I guess it doesn't have like pixie dust coming off it or
anything.  It's just a rock."

"The ring doesn't have pixie dust," said Aurelia, waggling her fingers
at Jenn.

"I guess.  I just mean it looks really normal.  You'd think magical
things would look special somehow."

"Well, anyway," said Aurelia, taking the rock back, "I don't think it's
magical.  I asked the dream-woman that, and she said the magic was in
me.  She didn't actually say it *wasn't* magical, but that seemed to be
implied."  She paused, pondering the rock.  "I guess it doesn't matter.
There's something brewing, and I'm part of it somehow.  I have two
things that somehow came out of a dream.  I guess I'll see what
happens."

"So, what next?"

"Hah, good question.  I guess I wait?  I mean, I want to go out and get
'em, whatever that means, but I don't know what I need to do."

"Maybe you just need to keep dealing with life like before.  Find a new
job, find a boyfriend, get your life back on track, ignore all this
weird stuff."

"I have a feeling," said Aurelia, showing foresight which had nothing
to do with second sight, "I won't be able to."

Chapter

Aurelia woke up the next morning to find a message from Stuart on
Facebook, where he had sent her a friend request plus a message.  His
message was short and sweet:

"Aurelia, I am very sorry for my actions.  They were inappropriate.  It
won't happen again.  I would enjoy talking to you about mythology
again.  - Stuart Halverson"

She accepted the friend request, and cruised through his page, out of
curiosity.  He wasn't very active, only posting status updates every
week or two.  His list of friends was very short, only 86, now
including Aurelia.  She didn't see any in common, which was exactly as
she'd expected.  He mostly seemed to talk about games he was playing,
both video games and others that involved other people, maybe some kind
of board game.  He had numerous pictures of little minature figures
he'd elaborately painted. There was no sense of scale in the pictures,
but she had the impression they were very small.  At first, she'd
actually thought they were figurines he'd purchased like that, but
commentary on the photos made it clear he'd actually done the painting.
She was impressed.

She was a little surprised to see that he didn't really talk about
mythology on Facebook at all.  She'd thought of him just as being that
guy who knows about mythology, and it was interesting perspective to
see that he had more sides to him.  She felt a bit guilty for
pigeon-holing him like that.

Still.  He clearly had other aspects, he was human, after all.  She
wrote a brief reply suggesting a time they could get together, and
spent another half hour cruising status updates and playing some
ridiculous game where she controlled a character who had to drop
glittering jewels down shafts to complete patterns, and unlock the next
screen.  It all had to be finished before a timer ran out, which
brought a dragon stomping in.  For all that she thought it was silly and
a waste of time, she couldn't help playing it for 20 minutes at a time.

She was mid-level in the game when the world melted around her, and
she felt another full-body vision coming on.  She'd gotten to the point
where she could feel them coming in enough time to sit down or get out
of the path of travel, if she was walking on a sidewalk.  She'd woken
up from one to discover that she was lying in the ground, apparently
knocked over by the flow of pedestrian traffic.  There was a small crowd
standing around her, looking uncertain, which melted away once it became
apparent she was still alive.

This vision resolved itself into an outside view of a city she'd never
seen before.  There were old buildings that suggested somewhere which
had been a city for many hundreds of years, if not longer.  She was a
little surprised to see a gnome of some variety scamper out from under
a parked car, which almost immediately started moving -- the driver
must have been sitting at the wheel.  The car pulled away, and it was
obvious something was wrong: one of the wheels started wobbling, then
another, then all four, and the car looked like it was weaving
drunkenly down the road.  It stopped, or rather lurched, to a halt, and
the driver got out (getting out on the right-hand side of the car, she
noticed, not the left like in the US) and stood back looking at his
car.  He put his hands to his head in frustration or despair, at which
point another car pulled up behind him and honked.  The man motioned
the other car around, and it pulled around after indulging in another
honk or two to express its indignation.

The vision faded out, and Aurelia was back in her apartment, sitting
back on the couch.  Like most of her visions, she had no idea what she
was looking at.  This one featured what she was starting to see as an
ongoing theme, of things breaking.  The next most recent one, from a
few days before, had shown an apartment building suddenly going dark
despite the rest of the city around it remaining powered.  The next
previous had shown a subway car somewhere deep underground lurching to
a stop for some reason she couldn't see.  Another one had shown a woman
dancing around trying to stop up a faucet that had apparently broken
off, and was spraying water everywhere.

Her phone played a tinkling little tune to indicate an incoming text
message.  She saw it was from Stacey and opened the message.  It read,
"herd u have a new bf, when do i get 2 meet him!?"  Puzzled, she
replied back, "no, just a guy i know. he tried 2 kiss me, i said no."
She wondered, once the message was sent, whether Stacey was talking
about Stuart, or Daniel.  She sent a follow-up reply, "there's another
guy who asked me out. him?"

The tune sounded again, and Stacey wrote, "dunno some guy jenn told me,
from dancing."  That solved that.  Aurelia wrote back, "haven't gone
out w/ him yet."  The reply was only moments later, "get on it gurl!!!"
Aurelia considered for a moment before replying, "soon."

She considered this.  She'd been going back and forth with herself for
days about taking Daniel up on his offer, although she was inclined to
accept.  The factor that stayed her hand was knowing that he wasn't
human.  He acted human, of course, and if you discounted the fancy
suit, ears and eyes, he seemed pretty normal.  He was certainly
attractive.  The old cycle of arguments for and against looped through
her head again before she actually shook her head in frustration.  "No
more!" she said to herself.

She composed a brief text message and sent it to his number: "I'd love
to go out. When/where?"  After considering for a moment, she wrote,
"This is Aurelia, from Neighbors last weekend."

There was no immediate reply, and Aurelia set down her phone, trying
not to be nervous.  She would occasionally make decisive action like
this, only to be plunged into fits of apprehension when the reply
didn't come immediately.  She catalogued the reasons he wouldn't be
replying: he didn't remember her; he had already changed his mind; he
had a girlfriend already, and was just toying with her; he met someone
between then and now.  It occurred to her, of course, that he was
probably just busy and unable to get to his phone right now, but that
didn't help stop the negative thoughts from cascading through her.

She determined to occupy herself with something, so she wouldn't think
about it.  She picked up a book, but couldn't concentrate on it.  It
was still mid-morning, which meant that the selection on TV would be
terrible.  She briefly considered streaming a video, but realized she
didn't want to sit still that long.

Finally she got up and cast about the apartment for a distraction.  Her
eye fell on the brown stone from the dream, and she picked it up.
She'd looked it over before, but now she really concentrated on it,
trying to invoke whatever magic or vision or power it might unlock.
This lasted all of 30 seconds before she started feeling silly and set
it down again.  There was no effect from her brief bout of
concentration.

Daunted by the prospect of trying to keep herself distracted inside the
apartment, she decided to head out, and put herself together.  Grabbing
her bag and coat, double-checking (not nervously, she insisted to
herself) that her phone was in the bag, she headed out the door.
She didn't know her destination, but being outside seemed better than
waiting inside.

At random, she turned downhill rather than uphill, headed for Seattle's
downtown.  Captiol Hill didn't seem like the right place just now.  The
weather was blustery, but as yet dry.  The sky was a dark grey that
made her think rain couldn't be far off.  She pulled out a set of
earbuds, and set her phone to play a random selection of music while
she walked briskly down the hill.

Aurelia couldn't tell if the air felt unsettled, or if she was just
feeling her own mood and projecting it onto the world around her.
Something felt off-kilter, and she pushed the thought away from her
consciousness.

Before long, she found herself inside Westlake Mall, a small but
upscale shopping mall on the north end of downtown.  She wandered the
halls, looking in windows, occasionally stepping inside a store when
something caught her eye.  More than once, she had to forcibly remind
herself that she was currently surviving on her relatively slim savings
-- unemployment covered rent plus a little bit, but it didn't even
stretch to all her bills, and she was barely keeping up with the credit
card bill's minimum payment.  Buying cute shoes now would be
disastrous.

As she passed Papyrus, a store selling paper goods, she noticed they
had a Help Wanted sign out front.  Despite what she was telling the
unemployment office each Monday, she was not being very dilligent about
searching for a new job.  She hesitated in front of the sign, wondering
how bad it would be to work retail.  She'd done it before, in college,
supplementing her meager student loans by selling overpriced clothing
at a chain store up at Northgate Mall.  It was a short bus ride, and
she hadn't hated it.  It seemed like she was selling herself short, now
that she had a degree and law firm experience, but this seemed like an
opportunity she should look into.

She went in the door, and up to the counter.  An attractive, and, she
realized, non-human woman looked up as she approached.  She had short, 
curly horns protruding from her brown hair, and Aurelia realized that the
fantastical coloring around the woman's eyes was probably not make-up.
It looked like the wings of a butterfly, featuring a heavy blue and
green theme and nearly symmetrical patterns.  She smiled as Aurelia
walked up, and said, "How can I help you?"

"I saw your sign outside, do you have an application I could fill out?"
Aurelia pointed back at the sign in the window.

"Sure," said the woman, opening a drawer and pulling out a sheet of
paper with a prolific array of little boxes and areas to fill out.
"We're looking for someone to cover the closing shift, from 2 to 10
pm.  Do you have any retail experience?"  It definitely wasn't makeup
around her eyes: Aurelia watched, a bit fascinated, as the colors
shifted and flowed on the woman's face.

"Um... Yes.  Oh, sorry, yes.  I do.  I worked at Banana Republic a few
years ago, I was a floor salesperson."

The woman looked at her quizzically, clearly wondering what Aurelia was
distracted by.  "You'd probably do fine here, then.  Go ahead and fill
that out."  She handed Aurelia a pen and busied herself behind the
counter.  Aurelia spent the next 10 minutes filling out little boxes,
checking items, and hemming and hawing about how to answer questions.
She handed it back to the woman, who tucked it away behind the counter.
"Thanks," she said, looking over Aurelia with an interested eye.

"Thank you," said Aurelia, her attitude now more in check.  "I look
forward to hearing from you."

The woman smiled at her, and waved as Aurelia left the store.

Chapter


Stuart replied, and they set up a time to meet at the library the next
day.  They met at one of the long tables in the library, beneath the
impressive gothic windows.

Stuart was conspicuously better-dressed than she'd seen him before, and
Aurelia had an internal face-palm moment: it looked like Stuart thought
he was on a date.  She wouldn't be surprised to find a bunch of flowers
or box of candy appearing when she sat down, and steeled herself
against it.  She didn't want to disappoint him, but definitely didn't
want to encourage him.

"Hi, Stuart," she said, offering her hand across the table.  He shook
it, his cacophony of emotion quite plain to her, shifting and squirming
colors writhing over each other like self-aware clouds.

"Hi," he said in response, his voice betraying a bit of a quaver.

She paused, her lips pursed, not quite sure how to deal with this.
There was something adorable about him, and she feared that telling him
no would be the moral equivalent of kicking a puppy.  She finally said,
"Stuart, you know this isn't a date, right?"  She said it as nicely as
she could, trying to cushion the blow.

His emotion stuff shifted to a dark purply-rose color, which dominated
the cacophony for a moment, before he rallied, and replied.  "Oh, um,
ok.  I..."  The colors shifted to a yellowish blue, verging on green.
His face looked like he was about to cry, but he stopped himself, and
took a deep breath.  "I thought... Well, I didn't know what to think.
Girls don't usually ask to meet me.  I was hoping... I guess... I'm
sorry."  His face fell again, and she stepped in, trying to stem the
flow before it started.

"No, it's fine.  I don't mind, it's ok.  Calm down.  I just... I'm not
dating anyone right now, I'm not really ready for it, I just had a bad
break-up."  The implied lie made her cringe, but the words had just
popped out and couldn't be unsaid.  She didn't want to date Stuart in
the same way that she didn't want to try breathing underwater or testing
her ability to walk through brick walls.  It wasn't a negative reaction
so much as one that was outside the bounds of reality.  She hurried on.
"Look, let's not worry about it, ok?  We can just talk about mythology,
like we said we would.  That's what I really need right now, and I think
you're exactly the right guy to help me with that.  Is that ok?"

He had sat down during this speech, and sat now, looking unhappy.
"Yeah, I guess.  I'm sorry, I was a jerk."

"No, you weren't a jerk," said Aurelia, urgently.  She didn't know how
to handle the situation.  She'd thought she had low self-esteem, but
she was a pillar of confidence compared to Stuart.  "Don't say that.
It was just a misunderstanding.  It's fine.  Look, maybe we can talk
about fairies again, I had some more questions."

He sat unmoving, the prospect of discussing his passion not apparently
strong enough to overcome the rejection he was feeling.  The yellowish
blue green deepened and darkened, becoming a purer dark green color,
and Aurelia wished for the millionth time that she had a color key that
matched colors to emotions.  She could guess, but it was still just a
guess.

"Stuart?  Are you gonna be ok?"

"I was just so sure this time it was real.  God!  What a fucking
idiot."  He looked like he was on the verge of bashing his head into
the table.

"Stuart!" she snapped, trying a trick her mom had used on boyfriends,
trying to shock them out of whatever mood they were slipping into.  His
head came up, surprised at her tone, and she wondered if it had worked.
"It's not your fault, and you're not an idiot, ok?  You're really
smart.  Quit moping like a child."

He nodded imperceptibly, and swiped at his eyes.  "Sorry," he said,
almost inaudibly.  "What do you want to know about fairies?"

"That's better," she said, her voice dripping with praise.  She smiled
at him, although he wasn't looking.  "I was wondering about the forms
fairies come in.  Like, are they usually human-like, or do they look
more like monsters?"

"Well," said Stuart, his voice still shaky with emotion, "it depends on
the story and on the kind of fairy you're talking about.  Um.  And I
guess you could open your definition a bit, and just talk more about
magical creatures -- then you get, like, satyrs and gorgons and dragons
and stuff.  Is that what you mean?"

"I mean, like, do you get fairies who just look like humans, but with
little weird things about them?  Like long pointy ears, or horns, or
hawk feathers in their hair, or whatever like that?"

"Oh.  I guess I don't know.  That sounds more like Shakespeare's
fairies than real fairies.  I mean, well.  'Real' fairies.  From actual
folklore.  Shakespeare wrote a play called 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
and when it's staged, the fairies usually look like that, or they have
little wings.  I think they do it because it's easy to dress people up
with little touches like that."  His emotions had calmed as he spoke,
and Aurelia was pleased to see that he seemed to be concentrating on
the subject at hand more than abusing himself.

"So, fairies like that didn't exist at all?"

"Well, that's hard to say.  Most of the stories are kind of
non-specific, or there are a bunch of different versions with different
descriptions.  Some of them may have been like that.  Certainly there
were fairies who looked like humans, that's really most of them.  So,
um...  why are you asking about this?  These seem like really specific
questions."

It was Aurelia's turn to be uncomfortable.  "Um, I guess it's just an
interest I have."

"Are you an art student or something?  Most people don't concentrate so
much on how exactly fairies looked.  Most of what I've studied devolves
back to human psychology, and how it's expressed in mythology and
folklore."

"Oh, no, I've already graduated."  She regretted the words as soon as
they were out of her mouth.  Being an art student would be a much more
convenient excuse than anything else she could make up.  Somehow, she
didn't think the truth would be well received.

"Oh, um, ok.  I thought... Never mind.  What was your major?"

"Psych with a minor in poly-sci."  The answer came without conscious
intervention, as she'd answered it so many times in the past.  She rewound
their last moments of conversation, put the words together with the
comments he'd just made about mythology really being a study of human
psychology, and executed another precision internal face-palm.

He just looked at her for a moment, and she saw that his emotions
calmed way down.  His face was appraising, and she squirmed a bit under
his gaze.  "Ok," he said.  That seemed to be the end of that.  "You
know, there are whole books dedicated just to paintings and pictures of
fairies."

"Oh, um, yeah.  I've seen one or two, but..." she stopped herself
before saying, "they don't look like real fairies."  "Uh.  I guess I
thought a lot of those paintings and things were just inventions.
I'm... I think I'm more interested in the original, actual fairies."

"You know fairies aren't real, right?"

"Yeah, I know, sorry.  I just mean the oldest fairies.  Like, furthest
back in time, closest to... Um.  Right, not real."  She smiled, but
even to her it felt kind of lame.

"You're not one of those crazy people, are you?  People who think
they're seeing fairies?"  His manner was dismissive, and Aurelia found
herself bridling at the implication that she was crazy.  It hit too
close to home, too close to her own insecurities and fears.

"Ha ha, no, of course not," she said.  She didn't know why her
composure had departed her so quickly, but she was feeling pretty small
at the moment.  "Look, I have to... Um.  I need to..."

"No, it's ok.  I don't really care, I was just curious.  I'm sorry, I
didn't mean to say you were crazy or anything.  Professor Marley just
told a story in class a couple days ago about running into someone who
insisted that fairies were real, and ended up jumping off a bridge,
thinking he could fly."

"How did they know what he thought?"

"I dunno, maybe he told them or something.  But you're not gonna do
that, right?"

"Nope.  Not crazy, or anyway not like that.  I think everyone's a
little crazy, in their own way.  Not real-crazy though," she amended,
seeing his look.  "Just like we all have our own problems and stuff
that makes us look crazy to other people, or other people look crazy to
us.  Sorry, that's my mom's theory.  Although, she might be more
real-crazy than I like to think about."

"Zo," said Stuart, adopting a thick German-ish accent, "tell me about
youah muzzah."  Seeing the dirty look that Aurelia was shooting him, he
immediately dropped his jocular mood, and said, "Sorry, you mentioned
crazy then your mother, and I naturally... Never mind."  He tailed off,
a little miserably.

Aurelia stood up, saying, "Look, I really should go.  I'm sorry I've
caused you such trouble..."

Stuart cut her off, "Hey, it was just a joke!  I'm sorry, I didn't mean
to offend you!"

Aurelia paused, then said, more kindly, "You didn't offend me.  I just
think... maybe I'm wasting both our time."

"No, you don't have to go, I'm having a good time.  I'm sorry, I don't
know the answers to your questions.  But maybe there are other ways I
can help you.  I know how to find a lot of source material, or maybe
there are other topics..."

Aurelia sat again, mollified.  "Yeah, probably.  Let's call it good for
today, though, ok?  Want to meet again tomorrow?  This is not a date,"
she said, warningly.

Stuart held up his hands, as if warding something off.  "I know, not
a date.  Yes, tomorrow sounds good.  I should get back to my paper I'm
supposed to be studying for anyway."

They both stood, and Aurelia said, "See you tomorrow, same time?"

"Sure."  He extended his hand, and they shook before Aurelia turned and
left.  Stuart sat down in his chair, looking a bit dejected.  Suddenly
Jonas, the balding librarian, was standing at his side, gazing at
Aurelia's departing figure.

"Who's your girlfriend?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows at Stuart.

Chapter

An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha scampered about the tomb, shaking toes
and shoulders and bobbling heads back and forth.  "Awake, awake!" she
cried, rousting the sleepers from their long slumber.  "The Seer has
returned!  Awake!"  It was still pitch black, but she moved with uncanny
precision, navigating the bulbous, odd-shaped corridors of the burial
mound easily.

Soon enough, she would be tasting the fresh air of the world above,
seeing what changes men had wrought in her absence.  But before she
did, she needed to gather her forces about her.  Oh, it was going to be
such fun.

Chapter

Daniel finally replied, suggesting that they meet at a little Ethiopian
restaurant he knew nearby.  Aurelia had never had Ethiopian food
before, but that was no impediment.  She was perfectly happy to try new
things, although she drew the line at food that looked like it might
still be alive.  She replied in the affirmative, and had two days to
fret and worry and have nervous, excited conversations with Jenn, who
was at least as excited as Aurelia was.

They went over the niceities of wardrobe, trying to find the perfect
outfit from Aurelia's closet.  Jenn occasionally offered up some item
of her own, until she remembered that Aurelia stood most of a foot
taller than her, and was smaller around.  Even so, they found a couple
items from Jenn's closet and dresser that might work.

"So, he dresses in a nice brown suit to go dancing.  What does that say
about him?  Did you find a website or pictures on Facebook or
anything?"  Jenn and Aurelia were sitting in Jenn's bedroom, going over
potential options.

"He's got a website, but it's all his art, not much about him.  He's
really good.  Oh-em-gee.  You should see some of the pastel work he's
done.  I was totally impressed."

"You just said, 'oh-em-gee.'  That is *so* two months ago."  Jenn flipped
her hair back in mock derision before both girls fell together laughing.
"So, nothing about him?"

"No, just an artist's bio, which is interesting, but doesn't really say
much about him as a day-to-day person.  I can tell you he belives in
the innate beauty of everyday objects, though, and meditates as part of
his creative process."  Aurelia rolled her eyes, and made a gesture of
tossing something behind her shoulder.  "God, I feel like I'm in high
school again."  She laughed at this, and Jenn joined in a moment later.

"I know, it's so exciting!  I'm so glad," she said, looking fondly at
Aurelia, "that you've found somebody."

"Hey, don't jinx it, I haven't found anybody.  I'm going on a date with
a guy I met once.  Just because he has good taste in clothes doesn't
mean he's The One.  I thought Jason was The One, and look how that
turned out."

Jenn looked pained for a brief moment.  Aurelia jumped on her playfully
and pressed her down to the bed.  "Don't even think it.  Whatever,
it's past, you didn't mean it.  I saw it, remember?"

"Ok," said Jenn, rallying, and pushing Aurelia off her.  "That's so
weird, though."

"Tell me about it!  What about this skirt?"

"God, that brushes my shoes.  Why are you so tall?"

"Dunno, ask my parents.  Hah!  If you can find 'em."  She smiled at her
little joke -- her dad had disappeared within a month of discovering that
her mother was pregnant, and was frequently referred to as "That Rat
Bastard" in the maternal household.  Aurelia had been a surprise,
although she thought her mom had done the best she could.

"Anyway.  No, not that one. Too frilly.  You're going for refined, not
80s prom queen."  Jenn took the skirt back and tossed it into the pile
that had become the location of rejected clothes.  "Hmm," said Jenn,
picking up dark-green dress.  "It does work pretty well with your
coloring."

"Jenn, that dress is short on *you*."  Aurelia held it up to herself to
demonstrate.  "I'd need to wear leggings, or it would be totally
obscene.  Unless you think he's into panty shots."

Jenn took her turn to roll her eyes.  "What guy isn't."

"I kinda think Daniel isn't.  I wonder if he ever goes by Dan, or if
it's always Daniel."

"Think of all the fun you'll have finding out."  Jenn took the dress
back and tossed it on the pile.  "You could wear something short,
though, and some nice tights.  You've got those awesome black patterned
tights, you could put them over colored tights, maybe some really dark
color, so the effect is subtle.  That'd look pretty nice."

"Nah, those got a run in them last time I wore them.  That's pretty
much the opposite of refined."

"Hmm.  True.  Why couldn't you pick a nice punk rock guitarist to go
out with?"

"I can't help it if I appeal to refined guys.  You gotta hide your
complete jealousy better than that."

"Hey, I get all the refined guys I want at work.  That's the last thing
I need when I go home.  Well, as long as by 'refined' you mean 'rich as
fuck'."  Jenn smiled to herself.

"What was that?"

"What?"

"That little smile.  Did you meet someone at your fancy club?"  Aurelia
leapt at her friend, and they both tumbled to the bed.  "Hah.  Now you
have to tell me, or I won't let you up."

"Oh, knock if off, they're all dicks there."

"Allll of them?"

"Well..." Jenn's smile strongly suggested she had a secret she wanted
to share.

"C'mon, out with it.  Did you meet some rich douchebag you can't
resist?"  Aurelia pulled her friend's face around to face her own.
"You can't lie to me, Jennifer S. Warren.  I have second sight, and I
can see all your lies."  She said it jokingly, but they both had the
uncomfortable realization that Aurelia was right.

"Hah hah," said Jenn, breaking the momentary pall.  "Don't use your
magic witchy powers on me, I will defeat you!"  So saying, she leapt
up, easily escaping Aurelia's token efforts to keep her pinned to the
bed.  Jenn struck a pose as if she were in a kung-fu video game, about
to fight a jerkily animated opponent.

"Don't change the subject.  Did you meet someone?  You'll have to tell
me sooner or later.  You and I are soulmates, Jenn."  Aurelia pointed
two fingers at her own eyes, then at Jenn's, narrowing her own gaze.
"I will have the truth from you."

"Perhaps later.  Let's worry about you for now.  You have an outfit to
figure out."  Jenn reached out and held up a white blouse with a
slightly lacy collar.  "How about this, with that vest over it?"

Chapter


Deep in her mound, An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha lay perfectly still.
She was concentrating.  Around her, the Tuatha were awaking from their
aeons-long slumber to a chorus of coughing, spitting, expletives and
sundry other expressions of good humor.  She didn't hear them, so deep
was her concentration.

She concentrated on that thin silvery thread that was the Seer.  It
waved in the darkness, like a pennant before battle: proud, prominent,
and so delicious to strike at.  She pursued it, darting at it, then
coming at it slowly, then striking like an adder.  All to no avail.
She could not reach the thread.  When she had it in sight, almost
within her grasp, it would slip free.  It was maddening.  Still, she
had patience.  Above all things, now, she had patience.

Around her, the Tuatha de Danaan awoke.

Chapter

Stuart sat at the table with a huge stack of books in front of him.
He'd taken all the time he should have spent working on his paper and
instead spent it looking for materials he thought Aurelia would be
interested in.  Since he didn't have a terribly clear idea what she was
looking for, the stack grew to alarming proportions.

Aurelia came in 5 minutes after the appointed hour, and stood before
the seat opposite Stuart.  The library was nearly deserted at this
hour, too early for the late risers, and too late for the morning class
crowd.

"Hi Stuart," she said, still standing, examining the stack.  "What's
this?"

"I looked up some of the books I thought you might like.  It's... a
little more than I expected to find.  I concentrated on fairies and
second sight, since those seemed to be your primary areas of interest.
I made up this index," here he flourished a printout of a spreadsheet,
"showing where each topic appears in each book."

"That sounds like it was a lot of work."  It was a statement, but
clearly bordering on a question of whether this was appropriate or not.

"I got into it, I'm sorry.  I tend to get into things, and lose track
of time.  Sorry about that."

"You don't have to keep apologizing," said Aurelia, pulling the first
volume off the stack and glancing through the pages.  "I just don't
want to hurt your school work.  You've got more important things than
me to worry about."  Aurelia wasn't looking, and so missed the spike of
emotion stuff that flared from Stuart when she said this.  "This is
pretty cool, though.  How old are these illustrations?"  She held out
the book, which showed woodcuts of men interacting with odd creatures,
human-like, but contorted and strange.

"Oh, let's see," he took the book from her, and flipped around a bit
before settling on a page.  "This chapter covers the 15th century."

She took the book back, and examined the woodcut that was showing when
she randomly flipped it open.  "This is great..." she trailed off,
looking over the detail in the picture.  It showed a man and what
looked like a devil, complete with horns and goat legs, dancing in a
sort of flat perspective that looked odd to her untrained eye.  She
spent the next few minutes silently flipping pages, having virtually
forgotten Stuart was still sitting there.  The images were engrossing,
showing a variety of magical and human subjects interacting, from a
variety of different sources.  But none of them really jibed with what
she was seeing out on the street -- they were close, but she hadn't seen
creatures like this so far.  She wondered if the location mattered, or
if fairies had changed over the years, or what.  She carefully skirted
around the uncomfortable supposition that she might just be crazy.

Aurelia suddenly realized that she was still standing, absorbed in the
book, and had completely forgotten about Stuart's presence.  She looked
up at him and smiled, finally seating herself.  "This is really cool,
Stuart, where did you find this book?"

His face brightened at the compliment, and he said, "Oh, I looked
through some of my notes from the last year or two, and I mentioned
your search to Professor Marley yesterday.  She had some good
suggestions.  You should meet her, I bet you'd love talking to her,
she's amazingly knowledgeable."  He took down the next book on the
stack and handed it to her.  "This one has a section on soothsaying,
scrying, and second sight, I think."  He looked down at his index.
"Yeah, chapters 23 and 30 are probably interesting there."

She took the book, putting aside the book with the woodcuts.  "Oh,
huh," she said, then paused for a minute while reading.  "This gets
pretty academic pretty quickly.  I don't know how much of this will
make sense to me."  She looked up and handed the book back to Stuart,
who took it, looking at where she'd started reading.

"Oh, yeah, this is pretty dense.  This isn't so much about the
historical practices like I was hoping it was.  I guess I didn't check
too closely.  Sorry."  His apology, this time, was at least not a
grovelling submission to his own unsuitablility to exist in her
presence.  She let it pass without comment.

"What's next on your stack?"

"Um," he said, examining the book and his index.  "Looks like this one
is a deconstruction of the Mabinogion, which is a set of epic stories
about ancient Welsh myths, including King Arthur.  I thought a couple
of the chapters dealing with interactions with fairy folk would be
interesting."

They went on in this manner, ending up with a stack of about 20 books
that Aurelia thought looked interesting enough to pursue, and a stack
of 20 or 30 books that were too dense, or too far afield from her
actual interests.  At the end of all that, he said, "You know, if you'd
tell me why you're interested, I could probably help you better to find
the information you want.  Is it embarrassing or something?  I mean,
this is way more research than anyone should do before getting a fairy
tattoo or something."

Aurelia felt herself blushing, and noted out of the corner of her eye a
wash of emotion stuff coming from herself.  She was glad Stuart
couldn't see it, although the blushing was probably enough.  "You'll
think I'm crazy.  It's better if we just leave it at this: I'm curious
to know everything I can about fairies, and about second sight."

"I won't think you're crazy, I promise," said Stuart, suddenly all
earnestness.  "I mean, I can tell what you're interested in from the
books you picked.  You don't seem crazy, why can't you tell me?"

Suddenly seized by a mad desire to let someone else in on the secret, she
relented after a brief internal struggle.  In a very quiet voice,
and leaning across the table, she said, "I think I have second sight."
She sat back, emotions roiling within her, suddenly fearful that she had
alienated the only person she knew who had the least clue as to any of
this stuff.

Stuart sat, his face unreadable, for a minute.  Then, he said, "Huh."
Another pause.  "What makes you think that?"  He sounded almost
analytical about it, and Aurelia's first wash of fear receded a bit.

"You don't think I'm crazy?"

"I don't know.  Second sight is, more or less, magic.  That would mean
you have magic powers.  People who think they have magic powers
are wrong, or at least I've never seen reliable proof of it.  Why do
you think you have second sight?"

"I...  God, this sounds fucking insane.  I can't believe I'm saying any
of this."

"Aurelia, just so you know, I play role playing games where I pretend
I'm a powerful wizard.  I've always wanted them to be real, sort of.
I don't think you're crazy, at least you don't act crazy, and..." he
paused, trying to figure out how to express himself, "holy crap,
I would give my right nut to have magic powers.  What do you see?"

Aurelia eyed Stuart for a long moment, torn between a desire to giggle
and the distinct need to run away and never get anywhere near any of
this again.  She settled for a series of short quiet barks of laughter.
"Ok.  What the hell.  I see fairies, or people I think are fairies.
They have weird things about them, like I just applied for a job at a
store in Westlake Mall, where the manager had these little curly
horns," she mimed the horns coming out of her own hair, "and coloring
like a butterfly on her face, and..."

Stuart interrupted, "But those things could just be makeup.  That
doesn't mean she's a fairy."

"Let me finish.  That's not all.  There's the guy at Aladdin who looks
like he was crossed with a hawk, including his eyes.  There's no way
that's makeup.  Then there's the fairy who... gave me this power, or
whatever it is."  She stopped and shrank into her seat a bit.  "He has
these huge, sort of friendly bat wings," she said quietly.

"Wait, someone *gave* you this power?"  Stuart was now leaning forward,
intent.

"I think so?  He said he did.  He gave me this ring," she showed the
ring, which was now residing on her middle finger, "and said no one
could take it from me.  I think it's a marker of the power, or
something."

"And he's a fairy?  With huge, friendly bat wings?"  Aurelia couldn't
tell if he was completely earnest, or mocking her in a very deadpan
manner.

"Yeah, but he called himself she, which I thought was weird.  He had a
weird name too, that I can't remember.  Something with a D."

"He called himself she?"

"I know, it was weird.  I was really drunk at the time, so maybe I'm
remembering it all wrong.  That doesn't explain the ring, though.
Watch this."  She pulled the ring off her finger, looked through it at
Stuart, then slipped it on her pinky, where it fit perfectly.

"So what?  It's a ring."

"Look," she shook her hand, and the ring stayed put.

"So?"

"So a ring that fits on this finger," she resisted the urge to
"accidentally" flip him off, "shouldn't also fit on this finger.
Haven't you ever worn a ring before?"

"Oh, no.  I guess not.  So that's magic?"

"Something.  It's not an elastic ring.  You try it on."  She passed it
across to him, and he slid it on a finger.  It hung, enormous and
comical, on his finger.  He passed it back, and looked at his hand,
then at hers.

"Huh," he said.  She held up her hand, palm toward him, and he placed
his palm against hers.  His hand was wider, but shorter, with thicker
fingers.  "Oh, look at that.  That's weird."

"Yeah, it's weird.  So yeah, I have that."  Now that she was openly
talking about it, she couldn't seem to stop.  "But I see all sorts of
weird things.  Like, I think I can see emotions, they're like colors
around people.  And I get these visions, where I seem to go away for a
minute or two, to witness something.  I never understand what it is I'm
looking at," she omitted the example of seeing Jason borderline-rape
her friend.  "There are all sorts of people running around who aren't
quite human.  I saw a werewolf a few weeks ago."

"Like, a real shaggy walking humanoid werewolf?"

"I think so.  I don't know, I'm not the mythology expert.  Anyway,
yeah, I see all sorts of weird shit now that I never saw before that
night.  So... that's why I'm asking.  Please don't tell anyone."  Now
that she'd gotten it out, she was suddenly terrified that someone would
find out and lock her up in a straitjacket.  It was never a worry with
Jenn, but Stuart was too big an unknown.  "Oh shit," she said, the fear
and uncertainty becoming overwhelming.  "Look, I shouldn't have said
any of that, ok?  I'm gonna go, just forget all this crap, I'm just a
crazy person, ok?  Don't worry about it."  She stood up precipitously,
and grabbed her coat and bag, turning hurriedly away from Stuart.

Stuart, for his part, got up so quickly that he knocked his chair over,
which resounded loudly in the quiet library.  "No, don't go!  I don't
think you're crazy!  Look, just stay here a minute more..."  He lowered
his voice as Aurelia turned around again.  "If this is real..." his
eyes were suddenly full of tears, and emotion flared from him in a
swirl of colors that caused Aurelia to flinch back.  He misinterpreted
the cause of her flinch, and said, "I promise, no more dating talk or
anything, just don't go."

"No," she said, feeling a little bewildered.  "It's not that, it's...
Your emotions.  They just flared like crazy."  She gestured at where
she could see shafts and flares and snakes of emotion emanating from
him.

"Oh," he said, looking down at himself.  "What am I feeling?" he
asked in a hoarse whisper.

Chapter

By the time Aurelia got home, she'd already exchanged 10 text messages
with Jenn, and found her friend waiting on her doorstep.  They
embraced, and Aurelia let them in to the apartment.  "What the hell is
going on, Aurey?  You've got me totally freaked out here!"

"Oh, shit, it's not that bad.  Come in, sit down, etc.  You want
anything?  I do."  Without another word, she poured herself a generous
measure of the moderately priced scotch she kept in the cupboard, and
drank it down in one gulp.  "Gaahhhhh.  Smooth!" she croaked out,
looking through the kitchen's pass-through at Jenn.  "You want some?"

"No, that stuff tastes like crap.  Do you have any beer? I'd take a
beer."

Aurelia rooted in the fridge, and found a can of PBR, which she brought
over to Jenn.  Jenn popped it open and took a demure sip.  "Now what's
going on?  It sounded from your messages like the world was ending!"

"The world's not ending.  Sorry, I was just kind of feeling weird.  I
told Stuart the whole story, the fairy and the second sight and all the
weird shit I've been seeing and everything.  After I did it, I had a
little meltdown or something.  I guess I've been more stressed about
all that stuff than I thought."

"Who's Stuart?"

"I told you about Stuart.  He's that nerdy kid I've been meeting at the
library."

"Oh, right, him.  You told him?  Why?"

"I'm not sure.  I think I just really needed to tell someone."

"You already told me," Jenn's voice carried a hint of hurt.

"That's not the same, I tell you everything.  We're soulmates,
remember?"

"Sure.  I guess.  Wait.  You're not interested in this Stuart kid
are you?"

"What?  No.  I told you, he thought we were on a date yesterday, and I
had to tell him no, I thought it was going to crush his little puppy
dog heart."

"Yeah, I know.  Well, I remember the story, I forgot that it was this
same guy.  Ok, so anyway.  You told him.  What then, did he think you
were crazy?"  Jenn's voice was full of concern, and she grabbed
Aurelia's hand preparatory to an onslaught of emotion, although she
didn't know what kind of emotion to prepare for.

"No, actually, he didn't.  I think that's why it was so strong.  I
thought he would think I was crazy, but he didn't.  We just talked
about it for a little bit.  I was kinda worried at the time, but he was
actually really sweet about it.  I think he wants to believe it's real,
because he wants to believe it could happen to him too.  He really
wants magic to be real, and thinks it isn't.  So it's like he doesn't
think I'm crazy, but also doesn't really believe I have second sight.

"But here's the thing," Aurelia continued, warming to her subject, "if
I can convince him, if I can actually safely describe things I'm seeing
to him, he knows way more about this stuff than I do.  He might be able
to help me figure out what's really going on.  He might be the key to
understanding it all."

"Woah," was Jenn's entire reply.  She sat staring into space,
considering what Aurelia had just said.  "That'd be pretty cool," she
said, returning to herself.  "You think you can trust him?"

"No choice, at this point.  He knows all about it, and he's probably as
trustworthy as anyone else."

"Ok, so..."  Jenn paused again. "What now?"

"Now, hopefully, I can start really trying to understand what the hell
is going on."

Chapter

Aurelia sat on her bed, looking over the array of clothing she had laid
out.  She and Jenn had decided on three different outfits, but couldn't
pin down which one was exactly right.  She was on her own for the final
decision, as Jenn had a late shift at the club, which went until 8 pm,
an hour after Aurelia and Daniel were supposed to meet at the Ethiopian
restaurant.

She wasn't merely worried about the clothing, of course, but that was a
convenient path along which to channel her nervous energy.  She was also
concerned that he seemed to be non-human.  She was also worried that,
as she'd told Stuart, she wasn't ready to try dating anyone.  It'd only
been a month and a half since Jason left her, after all.  Even in the
whirlwind of events that had happened since then, she still felt a
heaviness in her heart anytime she allowed her thoughts to stray in
that direction.

The question of dating a non-human also preyed upon her mind, but she
had so little information to work with, even with all the folklore and
mythology books she'd found, and her discussions with Stuart.  The fact
was that every book and all their conversations except the last one had
been predicated on the assumption that fairies were a construct of
early man's imagination, a projection of his own genius on the
apparently random whims of nature.  All she knew for sure was that he
seemed like an odd guy, he was good looking, and his eyes and ears were
kind of weird in a way she'd never seen before the Change.  Would he
act like a normal human?  What did that even mean?  Did he know that
she could see what he really was?  Did he even know what he really was?
It seemed like all she could come up with were questions, and no way to
answer them.

So, she channeled it all into selecting clothing.  In the end, she
flipped a coin twice, using each toss to determine which of the two
outfits would be discarded for tonight's purposes.  On the second flip,
she wasn't very happy with it, and went against the coin's recommendation,
choosing Jenn's lacey-collared white shirt, an embroidered black and grey
vest, and a knee-length dark emerald green skirt with a wide black belt.
They hadn't been able to agree on which shoes went with the combination,
and after hemming and hawing for nearly an hour, she decided on the black
and grey Fluevogs, which were a bit chunkier than she wanted, but the
color was perfect.  The no-name heels were tempting too, they looked
really good, but seemed a bit too dressy for the occasion.  She opted
for a pair of simple black sheer pantyhose, and topped it all off with
her grey wool coat, which left about three inches of skirt peeking out
under its hem.  She examined herself in the mirror, and found the effect
pleasing.

She looked at the address for the place she was going.  It was 15
blocks away, more or less, and over a sizeable ridge.  She really
didn't feel like walking it -- she'd arrive flushed, and be too warm,
only to be too cold as soon as she cooled down.  The bus routes that
went that direction were sporadic and didn't really go where she needed
them to: she'd still end up walking 5 or 6 blocks.  Although it seemed
like an extravagant expense, she ended up calling a cab, and paying the
$10 it cost to make the short trip.

When she got in the cab, and told the cabbie the destination, his face
broke out into a huge grin, and he said, "My cousin run dat place!
Good food, good choice."  They arrived at the door 5 minutes later; she
paid the fare, including a generous tip, and got out.  It was a sort of
shabby-looking building on Cherry, and Aurelia had realized on the ride
there that it was in the Ethiopian district, at least judging by the
number of Ethiopian restaurants they'd driven past (two: two more than
she'd ever seen in Seattle).  She found herself surprised that Daniel,
who had come to embody the height of refined New York fashion in her
imagination, would choose a restaurant that was so downscale.  She had
somehow expected that he would only eat in gleaming, trendy cafes and
bistros.  A run-down stucco building with rusting lawn furniture around
crooked tables on the front deck didn't seem to fit.

Still, she was here, and she went in, feeling brave.  The restaurant
was as shabby inside as out, with a number of haphazardly-placed tables
scattered around, and what she could only presume was an Ethiopian
channel playing on the ancient-looking television up in the corner.  It
was apparently a news program, showing serious-looking soccer players
one minute, and a crowd scene in a sunny, African-looking city the
next, all with a language narrating that didn't mean a thing to her.
The room was empty of inhabitants.

A woman came out, dressed in bright stripes and colors.  "How many?"
she said, her accent faint but noticeable.  Aurelia held up two fingers,
suddenly wondering if she was about to be stood up.  She'd confirmed
with Daniel the day before to make sure she had the right time and
address, so it didn't seem like he'd stand her up.  The woman pointed
her to a table, and she sat down, reflexively examining the menu.  She
recognized nothing, aside from the names of some of the American drinks.
When the woman asked if she wanted to start with something, she said,
"Just water, thanks."

Aurelia sat, feeling uncomfortable, for a minute.  The water glass
arrived, and she took a sip.  She pulled out her phone to check and see
if she'd missed any messages.  They were supposed to meet at 7, and it
was already 12 past.  No new texts, and she checked her email, just to
be sure.  New spam, but no new messages from Daniel.

She settled down with Facebook, determined not to be nervous.  She was
tempted to update her status: "Stood up on the wrong side of town, just
my luck," but didn't.  It seemed premature, and she didn't want to
jinx the date from the outset.  Anyway, it wasn't the wrong side of
town, it was just a side of town she'd never been on before.

Daniel breezed in a minute later, looking very sharp in a black
double-breasted suit with a narrow black tie against a crisp white
shirt.  He had a black fedora perched atop his head, which he swept off
in a grand bow as he arrived in front of Aurelia.  "My lady!" he said,
enthusiastically, "I am so pleased to see you!  I see you've already
made friendly with the locals."  He grinned at her as he gracefully
took his seat across the table from her.

She smiled at him, and said, "Hello."  She was suddenly feeling
tongue-tied, far from her normal comfort zone in too many ways.

"Well, don't let me trouble you too much for our first proper meeting.
I trust the intervening days have treated you well?"

"Yeah," said Aurelia reflexively.  "Not too bad.  How have you been?"
She wanted to say more, but couldn't figure out what it was she wanted
to say.

"I have been screwed by a stingy gallery owner, and feted by a visiting
friend, and created a masterpiece I call, 'Banal Corporate
Advertisement Number 36.'  On the whole, a net-positive set of events
which will cause me no loss of slumber.  And of course I have had our
current meeting to which I have been looking forward."  He smiled
a disarming smile across the table at her, which caused Aurelia to feel
both confused and warm.  She smiled in return, feeling like she was
about 12.

"How did you get screwed by a gallery owner," she asked, trying to rally
herself: she was 23, not 12, and needn't feel so intimidated by this
man or mostly-man, or whatever he was.  It was a lovely thought, but
didn't help much, and she still felt like she was 12.

"I hung a series of charcoal works in his gallery, you may have heard
of it," he named an art gallery she'd never heard of before, "and his
marketing consisted of mentioning it once on his 'Facebook' page," she
could hear the undisguised scorn at the word Facebook, and guessed why
she had been unable to find him there.  "Of course it is also my duty
to advertise my shows, which I did, so it wasn't a total disaster.
Then, when several of my works sold, he neglected to inform me, and
sent them on with the buyers that very moment.  I swear, you'd believe
the man had never run a gallery before!"

"What's wrong with that?  Were the sales wrong somehow?"

"Oh no, my dear!  One does not send purchased artwork home at the
moment of purchase.  One leaves it in the show, to be handed to the
unwashed masses only upon completion of the showing.  Of course I was
furious, but what is one to do?  I shall simply know, for the future,
to avoid his establishment like the plague, and avoid opportunities
which appear too good to be true."

"Oh, I'm sorry, that sounds really annoying."

"It was, as you say, quite annoying, but far from the end of the world.
The remaining unwashed masses were spared the mental trauma of my
genius, but it is to be supposed that the reduction in therapy costs
will compensate them, one way or another."  He grinned hugely, and
Aurelia couldn't tell if he was being serious or not.

"Wait, what?"

"Did I confuse you, dear?  I simply meant that although this oafish
gallery proprietor may have behaved most reproachably, it will not
cause my ruin.  It serves more as a delightful little tale that others
may enjoy schadenfreud-istically, if such a word may be said to exist."
Aurelia was starting to get the sense that he was purposely talking way
above her head as a kind of joke with himself.

"Well, I'm glad it's not too bad.  So... I've never had Ethiopian food
before.  What do you recommend?"

"First, you must understand that Ethiopian food is to be eaten with the
fingers, using injera, that is, the bread, as a kind of ersatz fork or
spoon.  The injera is key, and that is why I favor this establishment:
the injera produced here is crafted on-premises by skilled artisans,
and is simply delightful.  Other than that, I prefer these dishes," he
pointed to a half-dozen names on her menu.  They were simply names,
without any description.

"What are they?"

"Well.... It may be best experienced, for to describe them is like
trying to describe the Mona Lisa's smile.  Suffice to say that these,"
he pointed to several of the dishes, "are based on vegetables and
grains, and these," pointing to the others, "are based on meat.  All
are delicious, and I believe you will delight in their flavors and
textures.  Are you averse to spicy food?"  He arched an eyebrow at her
as a form of question.

"No, I'll try almost anything.  Why don't you order, I guess, since you
know what you're getting."

"A capital plan, you show uncommonly good sense.  I could tell from the
moment I set eyes on you."  He smiled what seemed to be a genuine
smile, although Aurelia still wondered if this whole thing was some
kind of elaborate joke to him.

"Did I ever thank you for the drink, by the way?"  Aurelia suddenly
doubted her memory of the night they'd met, a week ago at the dance
club.

"You did indeed.  You seemed a trifle out of sorts that evening, I
trust you're feeling better.  Your eye appears to be healing apace.  I
trust the miscreant who caused that particular damage is not a regular
fixture in your life."

"No, he's not.  It was someone who tried to mug me, and kind of failed.
My mom dated a lot of creeps, so I have a good eye for them.  That was
an unusual situation."

"I should hope so!  Mugging on the streets of Seattle!  Imagine.  Were
you wandering the Sodo tracks for some reason?  Or braving the corner
of 3rd and Pike?"

"No, it was on Capitol Hill.  It was just really late at night, after
the bars closed.  Maybe he was drunk or something, I don't know."  She
self-consciously brushed her fingers over the skin near her eye, which
was now an odd yellow-brown color as it healed.  It no longer hurt, and
the concealer she'd worked at earlier in the evening had covered it
well enough for her tastes.  The tear on her cheek was still scabbed
over, so there wasn't much to be done about that.

"My goodness.  Well.  I am pleased to hear you escaped without more
damage than you did.  It is distressing to imagine muggers wandering
the avenues of Capitol Hill, although I suppose we shall never leave
crime behind."

"Do you seriously always talk like this?"  Aurelia realized the
question might be rude, but couldn't help herself.  He didn't seem like
a real person, more like a projected image of a character from a comic
book.

His eyes sparkled with mirth as he said, "My, you are a firebrand,
aren't you.  This is, indeed, my normal mode of address.  Some find it
unnecessarily florid, but I believe it shows a quality of breeding which
is, ah-hah, independent of actual breeding.  I come from poor stock,
but that is no reason to speak like a commoner."  He seemed to be
unaware that he was tarring Aurelia with his broad strokes.  "I kin
tawk like a nohmul guy," he said, suddenly dropping into a thick
Brooklyn accent, "but I choose not to," he said again in his normal,
vaguely European accent.

"I see," said Aurelia, once again wondering where the joke left off and
the real person started.

"In any case, my dear, we are not here to discuss my breeding, nor
yours, of course."  He smiled as if at a joke Aurelia didn't get.
"Well, perhaps.  I am interested in you.  Tell me about yourself.  I
recall that you are currently unemployed, and trying to avoid the
passivity with which so many are afflicted."

Aurelia smiled, trying to figure out what she should tell him.  "Yeah,"
she said, deciding she didn't trust him enough to stray from the strict
small-talk regimen she employed in passing conversation.  "I'm still
working on that, but I guess you could say this is me doing something
about it.  I didn't let you pass by, and here we are."

Daniel smiled in his turn.  "True enough, here we are.  What is your
calling in life?  What do you want to do?  I assume that working in a
law office is not your ultimate goal, I think that's what you said you
had previously done."

"No, true.  It was just a job.  I guess.... I guess I don't know.  I
graduated from U-Dub, and got a job.  I don't know what my goal is.  I
have a degree in Psych, which is kinda like graduating with no degree
at all, as far as most jobs go.  I could go on to 6 more years of
school and end up in one of like ten teaching jobs in the whole
country, but that doesn't make much sense either."

"That truly is a pity.  You should formulate a goal, and strive toward
it.  Surely you have something, some object or desire toward which you
are moving?"  He seemed to be honestly concerned, and Aurelia couldn't
decide if she was touched, or annoyed that he was so insistent about
how she should live her life.

"Not really, not right now.  I just want to find a new job, and get a
boyfriend, I suppose."

"Well, those are certainly acceptable goals, if a trifle plebian.  It
might do you wonders to formulate a five- or ten-year goal.  I find it
does me well to have such a goal in mind, toward which I can work in a
general way, as well as making specific thrusts towards it.  For instance,
at the moment, I have a short-term goal of completing 100 Banal
Corporate Advertisements by the end of next year.  I started in January
of this year, and as you can see, I have been working hard toward my
goal.  This, by the way, is why I was able to nominate the latest as
number thirty-six.  This is in service of a larger goal, of returning
to Berlin for a year-long residency, for which I must save my pennies
to my best ability.  I also have a lesser goal, by which I mean one
to which I attach less importance, of selling 20 works of pure art in
the same timeframe."

"Oh, yeah," said Aurelia, nodding.  "That makes sense.  I guess I don't
have anything like that.  I'll have to think about that."

"I say, Aurelia," said Daniel, leaning forward a little, "would you be
interested in sitting for me?  You have a most delightful facial
structure, and I would be most pleased if I could have the honor of
sketching it at some point."

Aurelia felt herself starting to blush, and tried to fight it back.
She was only partially successful.  "I guess that would be cool.  I've
never done anything like that before."

At this point, their waitress returned, and Daniel ordered what sounded
like a prolific array of dishes, including an exotic-sounding Ethiopian
beer for each of them.  It arrived, and Aurelia found it to be much
like other pale ales she'd tried, but nodded appreciatively in any
case.

"So," she said after the flurry of ordering and drinks had subsided,
"what do you do, when you're not making your Banal Corporate
Advertisements, or sketching women you meet at clubs?"

"Oh, you flatter me, I don't make a regular practice of finding women
at clubs.  You are rather an exception in my routine.  In normal
practice, I find myself running with rather the same round of artists
and models.  Our interactions have been quite refreshing so far."  He
offered up his glass, and she clinked hers with his, taking a sip to
refreshing interactions.  "But as to your question, I spend most of my
free time sketching, drawing, painting, and working with different
materials.  Most of that work is of course trash, but occasionally a
glimpse of genius reveals itself, and must be pursued.  When not
working at these leisure-time activities, I endeavor to finish the
Advertisements, seek out new commissions for further Advertisements, or
occasionally I deign to sleep."  He smiled again, at some internal
joke.


"So, this art stuff is all you do?"

"Well, I suppose, in a manner of speaking.  I also perform the normal
workaday tasks one must: eating, maintaining a minimum level of
cleanliness, and so on.  Honestly, it is frightfully easy to fall
behind on daily ablutions when in the throes of a session.  I often
forget to sleep, and find myself awake as the dawn breaks, although
thankfully at this latitude and time of year, that dawn hour is
sufficiently late that it doesn't happen too frequently.  Should I have
some other activity?"

"Oh, no.  Um.  I was just thinking, like you don't watch football or...
no, of course you don't watch football.  I guess I haven't known any
really dedicated artists like you before.  Most of the guys I know are
into sports or cars or beer, or something, you know?"

"Well, I must confess a certain interest in beer, as you may see before
you."  He indicated his glass, which was only half-empty.  "Cars,
sports, and other such mainstream interests are quite outside my area
of interest, as you correctly surmise.  When one is seeking artistic
perfection, distractions by such mundane pursuits are rather
counter-productive.  In any case, I find that gentlemen who are
interested in such topics are more inclined to consider me a pugilistic
target than a fellow, and as such, I avoid their company whenever
possible.  With any luck, we can expand your vocabulary of personal
acquaintance, so you can see that gentlemen come in many varieties,
including those who do not feel inclined to shout at their television
sets while waving half-empty cans of Coors in the air as spandex-clad
gorillas pummel each other for the soul-sucking cyclops that is the
Television Audience."

Aurelia looked at him for a moment, halfway between admiration and
disdain.  It felt like he was insulting her in some way she couldn't
quite put her finger on, but at the same time, there was no denying
that he was charming and fascinating.  "I can't believe you're for
real," she finally said.

He smiled and raised his glass again in salute.  "I assure you, my
dear, that I am completely real."

Chapter

Daniel offered to drive her home at the end of dinner, and she had
accepted.  There couldn't be any harm in it.  His car wasn't what she
had expected: she thought he'd be driving either some utterly quirky
car from the 60s, or a sleek and modern luxury car, like a BMW or
Mercedes.  Instead, he pulled open the door on a mid-80s Volkswagen
Passat.  It was free of clutter, but the seats were stained and old
looking, and the car had an air of decay that seemed utterly out of
keeping with his manner.

They drove the short distance back to her apartment, and sat idling
outside the building.  Aurelia was fighting with herself whether she
should invite him up for coffee or a nightcap.  On the one hand, there
was no denying that he was very attractive, and quite smart.  On the
other, she had never shaken the feeling that he was subtly mocking her
throughout dinner, and she didn't much like that.

"This is me," she said, waving up at the building.  "Um.  Would you
like to come up for coffee or something?"  She couldn't tell which
answer she was hoping for.

He looked at her, his eyes the same unnaturally bright green she had
noticed in the club.  His scent was the same, too, and she wondered if
that was contributing to the mental confusion she was feeling.  He
gently grabbed her chin in his hand, and leaned over to brush his lips
lightly over hers.  She froze, a sudden frenzy in her loins threatening
to overwhelm all reason.  "Yes," he said, "I think I would enjoy that."

There followed a nearly comical mood-killing search for parking, which
only ended ten minutes later, and nearly 5 blocks from her apartment
after much fruitless circling.  He pounced on a spot which opened up in
front of them.  They walked briskly back to the apartment, and she
opened the door for them.

She was swept up in his arms, his lips now pressed to hers full force,
and her own hands trailed down his body, grabbing a handful of trouser
on each side and pulling his hips into her.  He responded eagerly,
running his hands through her hair, and the kiss turned passionate very
quickly.  He tried to speak, "I'm, ah...  Oh," and his eloquence seemed
to have departed him.

Aurelia led him further into the apartment, although not to the
bedroom.  Some small part of her resisted the urge to immediately bed
him.  Instead, they found their way to her sofa.  His lips were hot on
hers, and she twined her hands through his hair.  The same small part
of her that resisted the bed was interested to note that she could feel
the elongation of his ears, which raised questions as to what anyone
else would feel.

His hands ran up and down her body, and the temptation to strip him
bare was nearly, but not quite, overwhelming.  His hands lingered near
her butt, and she pulled them back up to her waist, fighting, fighting
to maintain that kernel of sanity in the hot rush of passion that was
flooding her.  His lips moved to her earlobe, then down her neck and
around her collarbone, gently undoing the top button on her tight
collar.  She couldn't bring herself to deny him this small liberty.
His hands felt like they were burning, glued to her waist, and she
almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

"I could lose myself in you," she said, breathlessly, barely
understanding the meaning of her words.

"Yes please," he replied, immediately returning his attention to her
neck.  His hands caressed her back, then moved up to run through her
hair again.  He pulled her head toward his and was kissing her hard
once more.

She pulled back, and breathed, "But not tonight," before returning to
the kiss.

"I can wait," he murmured, although his actions suggested that he
didn't want to.

"Good," she whispered, pulling him back into a standing position.  She
pressed her whole body into his, noting with curiosity that they were
the same height, or nearly so.  His erect penis pressed into her
abdomen through his pants, and she nearly lost her resolve.  She
recovered, however, and slowly maneuvered him toward the door.

They reached the door, and she gave him a final, deep kiss before
pulling her face back, then gently kissing his neck, once on each side.
"You're fascinating and weird.  More soon, yes?"

He nodded his head in the dark apartment.  "Yes.  Please."  His hands
remained locked to her waist.  She didn't want them to leave, and it
took a supreme effort of will to gently ease them off.

"Good.  We'll talk soon.  Good night."

"Good night."  He kissed her again, which went from a comparatively
chaste kiss to another tightly-gripped embrace flooded with dark purple
intertwining emotions.  Fighting again, she pushed him gently away.

"Good night.  Talk soon.  Now go away."  She said it playfully, but she
didn't think she'd actually be able to resist if he put up a fight
about going.

Reluctantly, he did turn to the door and open it.  He turned back, and
said, "Talk soon."  His fancy accent was almost gone.  With a grimace that
was mostly a smile, he dropped his hat back onto his head, and quickly
closed the door behind him.  Aurelia leaned against the wall,
shuddering with reaction, her body throbbing and demanding the denied
release.

Chapter

Aurelia lay in bed, the cold light of the overcast Seattle morning
washing over her.  The bedding was wound around her from her thrashing
and twisting in the night.  She looked out at the sky through her
window, interrupted by the bare branches of trees.  It was,
predictably, raining lightly.  She didn't have to check with any other
source than her own imagination to know that it was somewhere near 40
degrees outside.  It was winter in Seattle, of course it was raining
slightly and around 40.

She rolled away from the window and curled around herself, forming a
pretty C shape with the dark comma of her hair spread out on the
pillow.  She sat bolt upright when an unexpected voice said, "He no
good," at the foot of the bed.  She looked down and saw the little man
she'd pinned under the handle of the knife a few weeks ago.

"What!?"  The unexpectedness of the address sent her mind spinning.
"What are you doing here?  What are you talking about?"

The little man sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled off his odd felt
hat, and ran his hands through hair that she saw was now just a long
fringe around a bald head, rubbing his little hand over his pate.  "You
see us, so I tell you.  That man last night, he no good."

"What the fuck!  Were you watching us?"  She picked up a pillow and
threw it at him.  He ducked to avoid it, resuming his downcast attitude
sitting on the edge of the bed.  "Do I get no privacy now?  Jesus!
This is not what I needed to be doing right now."

"Not be so angry.  I tell you, he part she, that mean he no good."

"What?"  Her expression must have been comically confused, but he
didn't seem to notice.  "What do you mean he's part she?  You mean he's
like part woman or something?"

"No, not woman-she."  The little man paused, then said, with emphasis,
"Sidhe."  It sounded like "she" with a very faint "yuh" sound on the
end: "SHE-yuh".  She could hear it this time.

"What does that mean?  I've never heard that word before."

The little man nodded to himself, and said, "Learn it now.  Is old
language for... I think fairy."  He muttered something to himself that
didn't sound like English.

"Wait.  Say that again."  She pointed imperiously at him, in her upset
state.

"Mo chrack sa hannik," he said, slowly and distinctly, looking directly
at her for once.

"What does that mean?  What language is that?"

"Is old language.  It mean, 'My doom is upon me'."

She grabbed up her phone, and said, "How do you spell that?" as she
jabbed at the screen.

"Spell?"  His quizzical look was wasted on her, face buried as it was
in the flickering light of the little screen.

"Yeah...."  She looked up again.  "How do you write it down?"

He immediately averted his eyes and tugged on the brim of his hat,
which looked like a well-practiced gesture.  "I no write.  No.  No
write."

She blew her overgrown bangs out of her face in a gesture of
frustration.  "What's the name of the old language?"

"Oh," he said, "Shay gaahlik a haunnam."

"What does that mean?  Garlic?"

"Chan... no.  Gaahlik.  I not know English word."  

"Fine.  I'll figure it out later.  Why does him being she-yuh," she
mangled the word, "mean he's no good?  Aren't you a fairy too?"

He squirmed, but didn't answer.

"Aren't you?  Aren't you a fairy?  What about the big guy who gave me
the ring?  Isn't he a fairy?  Why is that a bad thing?"

He squirmed again, and once again remained silent.

"Look at me!  You can't just barge in here when I'm," she looked down
at herself and pulled the covers over her wide-necked t-shirt, "wearing
next to nothing, and, and, and tell me... Shit.  Tell me I was just
making out with someone who's no good, because he's... What, because
he's the same kind of thing you are?  That's just fucked up!  Why
should I believe you?  If she-yuh are so bad, then get out!  Quit
peeping at me!  Get the fuck out!"

A neighbor banged on the bedroom wall.  "Keep it down in there!" she
heard faintly through the wall.

"Fuck," she said, in a lower voice.  She launched across the bed,
snagging the little man's arm as he tried to get out of the way.  She
spoke softly, but with intensity, "Look.  Look at me.  Look at me!
I don't want you in here.  It's creepy.  Don't make me get the iron out
again, ok?"  A look of concern crossed his face at the mention of iron.
"Leave me alone.  If I want to bring someone home, that's my own deal.
You're not my mom, and I'm an adult!"

He squirmed, and finally bawled, "No iron!  I leave you alone, but
beware sidhe!"  He yanked his arm free, and dashed out the door.
Aurelia thought she saw him going transparent as he rounded the door
frame.  She felt eyes on her again, and looked around the room, trying
to spot the other observers.  Failing at this, she spoke to the room at
large, "Everything in this fucking house will be made of iron if I have
to.  Leave me alone.  I don't want you little shits spying on me!"  For
emphasis, she grabbed the little iron knife and jerked it free of its
sheath, brandishing it randomly about the room.

Subsiding, she glowered under her hair, which had fallen in front of
her face, and carefully put the knife back in the sheath, setting it
back on the bedside table. She tugged on the first pair of pants she
came across and whipped off the shirt, changing into a black bra and a
more outside-world-worthy shirt, glaring about the room, as if daring
anyone to make a comment.  She was greeted by silence, and a complete
absence of commentary from tiny house spirits.

In five minutes, she was out of the house, with the little knife
tucked, in its sheath, in her waistband.

Chapter

Aurelia dropped into a booth in Charlies, a 24-hour cafe on Broadway,
and contemplated the menu.  The brief walk from her apartment had
calmed her down a bit, and she found herself considering her situation
while her eyes roamed, unseeing, over the text on the menu.  It was
late morning on a Sunday, and the brunch crowd was out in full force,
which made it somewhat amazing she had a booth to herself, but luck
seemed to be with her.  Around her, normal human voices sounded in
normal human conversation, with no mention of sidhe, or fairies, or
second sight, or any of it.  She sank into the mundanity of it all, and
let her mind trail off.

A waiter came up, and asked what she wanted, automatically dropping a
coffee cup on the table and filling it with black coffee.  She glanced
at him, alert for any sign of fairy nature, but he was a normal human,
with a proliferation of tattoos crawling up his arms, a scruffy beard,
and hair that needed to be cut a few weeks ago, as was the fashion.
She selected, somewhat at random, eggs benedict and hashbrowns, which
sounded good.  With conscious determination, she didn't look at the
price.  Whatever it was, it was worth it to be out of the house.

Somewhat guiltily, she texted Jenn, saying that she was at Charlies,
and that Jenn should join her.  They didn't have an established pattern
of going to brunch on Sunday mornings necessarily, but if one of them
went to brunch, it was usually along with the other.  Jenn sent back
that she could join in 20 minutes, but desperately needed a shower.
Aurelia flagged down the waiter, and asked if he could delay her order
by 20 minutes.  He wandered back to check with the kitchen, and came
back 5 minutes later to say that would be fine.

As promised, Jenn came in the door 20 minutes later.  No makeup, with
her hair down to let it dry, and wearing very comfortable but not very
dressy clothes.  "Hello, sunshine," said Jenn, yawning hugely despite
the shower and brisk walk she must have just taken.  She grinned at
Aurelia, and they hugged briefly before both sat down again.

"Hey, thanks for joining me.  Sorry about that, I kinda got here, then
realized I forgot to ask if you wanted to come.  I hope I didn't wake
you up or anything."

"Oh, no big.  I needed to get up anyway, I was totally just lying in
bed wondering what to do with my day.  Voila, there goes my phone.  And
here I am."

"What were you up to last night?  Aren't you usually up before now?"
Aurelia asked the questions earnestly, wondering what her friend had
gotten up to while she was conversing with Daniel.

"Oh, you know.  Got home from work, sat around, boring Saturday night
at home."  Something about Jenn's attitude tickled at Aurelia's
curiosity.

"Let me see your neck."

"What?"  Jenn blushed a little, and Aurelia knew she was right.

"I knew it.  You brought home one of those rich douchebags, didn't
you."  She was smiling now, happy that her friend had found someone,
potentially someone awesome with lots of money.

Jenn smiled, and briefly pulled back her hair to show a hickey low on
her neck.  "Maybe."

"Jenn!" Aurelia squealed, and got up to lean across the table and hug
Jenn.  Her exuberance was noted by a pair at the next table over, who
glanced at them, and then away, feigning a lack of interest.

"Yeah, yeah, calm down.  I don't know if it means anything yet.  He
might just be a horny douchebag.  Ask again in a couple of weeks.
Wait.  Wasn't last night your big date with dance club boy?"  Jenn
glanced a question at Aurelia.

Now it was Aurelia's turn to blush, and she looked down at the table
before looking back up into Jenn's eyes.  Her face split into a grin,
and she said, "Yeah."  Prodded by Jenn's look, she said, "It went
alright.  He came over last night, but I made him go away before too
long. I don't think I have any evidence."  She pulled her hair back and
Jenn examined her neck.

"Nope.  Looks like he's got a gentle touch."

"I... think so?  I dunno, it was weird.  I thought the whole night long
that he was making fun of me, but I couldn't really tell.  Like, he was
making one long joke at my expense, but so subtle it went right over my
head.  But then he asked to come up, and I just couldn't say no.  He
probably only stayed for 10 minutes before I kicked him out.  It was
awesome, and I *so* didn't want him to leave.  Oh my god.  I thought I
was going to explode.  I didn't realize I've been bottling all that up
so much, or whatever."

Jenn nodded sagely, and said, "You should stop doing that," in a matter
of fact tone.

"Duh.  Hmph.  I know, but I'm not going to bed with just anyone.  That
sounds like a disaster waiting to happen."

"Mmm, yes and no.  You need to lose some of that reservation you have."
Jenn considered the question with an overstated air, stroking her chin
with her hand, and gazing up at the ceiling.  "Yes, I prescribe a
series of wild flings for you.  That would do you good."

"Pff, whatever.  I think my resevations are good.  They keep me from
doing stupid things."

"Perhaps.  In any case.  Looks like it was a good night for the wonder
twins!"  Jenn held up her hand, and Aurelia gave her a high-five.
"What are you eating this fine morning?"

"Wait, did you just kick out your boy with 20 minutes' notice?"

"He was going anyway.  No big deal, like I said."  Jenn grinned.
"Let's eat some brunch!"

Chapter


An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha stood over her mound, and surveyed the
land around it.  It was empty and barren, stretching away to the hills
and the clouds, tracers of mist drifting past on the wind.  Around her
stood the first wave of the Tuatha de Danaan: gnomes, trolls, fairies,
giants, elves, brownies, and every possible description of odd-looking
humanoid character.  This was of course just a small selection.  There
were many mounds yet to wake, and a host of her old allies (and
enemies) to be found.  The Seer was again in the world, which meant it
was time to come out and play again.

"Minions!" she cried, in an ancient dialect of Gaelic which hadn't been
heard on the surface of the Earth for millenia, "join with the four
winds, and find your compatriots!  Our time has returned, with the
return of the Seer!  The prophecy is fulfilled, and we may once more
rule the land of man!  Now, go!  Scatter!  Bring me allies, and news!"

She walked forward and into the Land of Faerie, long deserted, the home
of the magical creatures of the world.  It was overgrown and wild, and
even so she grinned her hideous, black-toothed grin, and plunged
forward.

Chapter

Aurelia woke with a start, and looked blearily about.  Something was
terribly wrong, but she didn't know what.  She hadn't been dreaming,
at least not important dreams.  She looked about her, but there was
nothing wrong.  Her room stood as she had left it.  There were no fairies
or spirits visible.  What had woken her?

She lay down again, and decided it must have been a bad dream or
something.  She grabbed the iron knife down from the bedside table, and
tucked it under her pillow, not entirely sure why she did so.

Gradually, she fell back to sleep, and soon was breathing regularly
again.

Chapter

Aurelia had set up a standing thrice-weekly meeting with Stuart, as
much at his insistence as anything else.  Every Monday, Wednesday and
Friday, they were to meet in the library on the UW campus and review
mythology materials, in addition to going on little walking tours where
she would describe what she was seeing to him.  Stuart had developed a
titanic crush on Aurelia, substantially augmented by the realization
that she seemed to authentically have magical powers.  He didn't dare
tell anyone else, but he had dropped hints to Professor Marley and one
or two others that he had a new line of research he was pursuing.

Aurelia dropped into her seat, at what had become their section of
table.  Stuart had a small stack of books he was working through,
taking notes of some variety.  Aurelia was feeling tired, after a night
punctuated by numerous unexpected wakeful periods, awoken by something
unknown.

"Hey Stuart," she said, as she pulled out her own notebook.  At his
suggestion, she'd started taking notes on what all was happening,
including lists of colors associated with emotions.  It was slow going,
because she couldn't reliably force herself to feel emotions, and she
was frequently unable to ask others what they were feeling when she saw
emotion-stuff coming from them.  On top of that, the emotions didn't
seem to produce consistent colors between different people.

"Morning Aurelia.  You look nice today."  Stuart had been pushing in
this direction, and Aurelia was stuck somewhere between being
flattered, and being annoyed by it.

"Thanks," she replied, simply.  She was dressed in a mid-length plaid
skirt, black leggings, and a dark green sweater over a yellow
turtleneck, both of which reflected accent colors in the skirt.  It was
not particularly extravagant clothing for her, and she hardly felt
worthy of comment, with her hair pulled back into a simple pony-tail
and no makeup to speak of.

"What have you noticed over the weekend," he asked, indicating her
notebook.  She flipped it around so he could see it: a list of
non-humans she'd spied walking around, and a couple of emotion-colors.
As he looked over the list, he clarified things, asking questions like,
"What do you mean by dog-man here?"  As she made clear what she was
talking about with physical descriptions, he would consider, and try to
find references in a couple of different books for what kind of
creature she'd seen.

"Y'know, it's weird.  Most of what you see are creatures I've never
heard of before.  I mean, maybe if you go back to Egyptian or Sumerian
mythology or something, but a lot of your other clues come pretty
clearly from Celtic mythology.  I almost wonder if your power is biased
in some way."

"Don't call it a power, that sounds so weird," she said, wrinkling her
nose.  "I'm not a witch or something.  I can just see stuff other
people can't."

"Ok.  We've got to call it something, though.  What would you call it?"

"It's just sight.  It's what I see.  Maybe it's a sense?"

"Could be.  That raises its own questions, like what if all humans
innately have this sense, and we're just not using it?  I didn't see
anything weird when I put on that ring, but maybe it doesn't work like
a magic ring does in D&D.  Or maybe it's keyed to you somehow.  Man,
this whole thing is so fascinating.  Can I see the ring again?"

She handed it over, saying, "It's still just a ring.  Aside from the
weird sizing thing, it doesn't behave differently from any other ring
out there."

"I know," he said, pausing to examine the ring again.  "I guess I keep
hoping to find an inscription or something on it.  Some sign, you
know."

"Yeah, I know.  I did that too.  It's just a ring."

"You know," he said, looking askance at the stack of books he had
arrayed on the table, "it's been bugging me for a week or two now.
There was some prophecy I read about years ago that seemed like it
might apply in your case.  Something about a seer."

"What's a seer?"

"Well... you.  Someone who sees with extraordinary perception, or sees
things that others can't or won't see, usually in some magical way.
I wish I could remember it.  I can't remember were I found it, or what
context it was in, even.  Could have been Celtic, could have been Slavic,
could have been African."

"Wait, a prophecy?  Like Nostradamus?  I thought all those things were
crap anyway."

"Yes and no.  Some of Nostradamus's prophesies actually did come true,
if you look at them the right way.  Anyway, it wasn't Nostradamus, it
was someone way older than that, maybe not even accredited to one
person.  I'll think of it eventually."

"Oh, huh."  Aurelia looked back down at the table.  "What books did you
find this time?"

"Oh," said Stuart, surveying the pile.  "This is mostly stuff you've
seen before.  I was working on a theory around the Oracle at Delphi, but
it didn't make sense once I started reading more about it."

"Oh, ok."  Aurelia fell silent, having nothing else to contribute to
the conversation.

"Hey, look," said Stuart, pushing his glasses up his nose and
stretching his arms, "let's go do a walkaround.  I'm sick of books
right now."

She looked at him with a smile, and joked, "You get sick of books?"

"Yeah, even I get sick of books.  C'mon, let's go outside."

Outside, as it happened, was another typical mid-winter day in Seattle.
The sun was nowhere to be seen, hiding behind a thick layer of cloud,
with intermittent drizzle providing another day of "rain" on the
charts, without actually requiring one to find an umbrella.  They
walked across red square, meandering slowly.  There were a few people
about, but the crowd was sparse.

Aurelia pointed out a woman walking along, who had elaborate gazelle
horns growing from her head, with an elongated face terminating in a
black nose.  Her legs were normal enough to escape description, unlike
the goat-legged man she'd seen at the dance clubs so many weeks ago.
There was a couple walking, hand in hand, with a cloud of emotion-stuff
trailing behind them, he trailing a bizarre looking green-and-red mixture,
she with a dark orange.  The trails twirled around each other.  Neither
Stuart nor Aurelia could tell what the emotion stuff might represent,
as the couple walked with neutral faces that betrayed no strong
emotion.

She spotted a glimpse of another gnome character, which she described
to him based on only a moment's sighting: short, maybe a foot and a
half tall, with a bald head and wrinkly skin, pinched face, and arms
and legs too long for his body, which was naked except for a
strategically placed scrap of fabric.  She nodded toward where she'd
seen it, which was walking in a grassy area, off the path.  It had
disappeared behind a tree.

"How many of these things do you see in a normal day?"  Stuart had
brought along a notebook, which he'd pulled out of his backpack and was
now scribbling on.

"Oh, I don't know.  I think I decided at one point that around 5% of
Capitol Hill was populated with people who were obviously not human."

"That's fascinating.  If you're right, the fairies never died off or
went into hiding, we just stopped being able to see them."  To himself,
he added, "I wonder if it coincided with the advent of Christianity,"
and he scribbled something on his notepad to go with that thought.

"What would it have to do with Christianity?"  Aurelia's experience with
religion was that other people had it, and those who did were usually
the ones most willing to believe in stuff that didn't make any sense to
her, whether it was God, or spirits or ghosts or anything else.
Tracing past that thought, she said out lound, "You know, I've never
seen any ghosts.  I wonder if they don't really exist."

"Or if they do exist, and either can't be seen with your vision, or
maybe aren't even visible at all.  It's outside my specialty, but I
kinda thought ghosts were supposed to be visible, as well as audible.
Your power includes hearing things, right?"

She thought of the little man at the foot of her bed, who'd called
himself a brownie.  "Yeah, it does."

They walked on, meandering up through the park-like area on the north
end of the campus.  As they were nearing 15th Avenue, which was the
border to the commercial district to the west, Aurelia suddenly shrieked,
and jerked to the right, away from Stuart.  He looked over, surprised,
and saw her struggling against something, but he couldn't see anything.
"What's happening?" he said, alarmed.

"Let go!" she shouted.  She tugged again away from something, lost her
footing, and tumbled off the path and into thin air.

Chapter

Stuart stood stock still for a moment, before jerking forward, waving his
arms through the air where Aurelia had been, a moment before.  There was
nothing there.  He looked around wildly, trying to spot where she could
have run off to.  There was nowhere she could be hiding: there were only
trees, and down to the west, the sidewalk.  No shrubs, no hidden tunnels
he knew of, no explanation.  The nearest tree was more than ten feet
away.

"Aurelia?" he said, as alarmed as he'd ever been in his life.  He cast
about more, but didn't know what he was looking for, or what he would
do if he found it.  "Holy shit," he said to himself.  He had no idea
what to do.

As suddenly as she'd disappeared, she re-appeared.  Her clothing had
changed: no longer was she wearing the plaid skirt or sweater, now she
was dressed in a long, rough brown wool dress with a plaid shawl falling
off her shoulders.  Her bag was slung over her shoulder, tattered,
and her hair was wild and unkempt compared to a moment ago.  Her face
was abraded, as if she'd run through a blackberry patch.

"Augh!" she said.  Spotting Stuart, she fell on him, embracing him hard,
squeezing the air out of him. "Oh thank god," she said.  "I'm so glad
to see you."  He hugged her back, torn between his foundational desire
to be as close to her as possible and the completely, unworldly bizarre
thing he'd just witnessed.

When he could breathe again, he said, "What just happened?  Where did
you go?"

She looked around, her face a bit wild, and said, "I'm back, right?
This is Seattle?  You're Stuart?  Oh god, that was fucking awful!"

"Wait, hold on.  Aurelia.  You were gone like two minutes."  She let
him go, and stood back to look around again.

"No, I was there for four days."

Chapter

Aurelia told him what had happened, as best she could, as they sat in a
Thai restaurant on the Ave.  The first thing she said was, "I'm starving.
I can finally eat again.  I need to eat something."

Stuart, feeling lost, had said, "What are you talking about?"

"You told me!  You said you should never eat anything in the land of
Fairy, or you'd be stuck there forever!"

"Oh shit," he'd said.  They walked to the Ave and into the first
restaurant they'd spotted.  The walk was silent, as Aurelia slowly took
in the fact that she was back in Seattle.  Her attitude was haunted
and jittery; she jumped at things he couldn't see.  Stuart wasn't sure
if she was jumping at things she could really see, or just having a
stress reaction.

"What happened?" he asked.  She looked at the menu a bit strangely,
as if unsure what it was for.

"I can't seem to read this.  Could you order for us?" she looked at him
plaintively, and he silently took the menu from her.  Aurelia took a deep
breath and grabbed the table edge for support, although she seemed steady
enough in her physical bearing.  "What day is it?" she finally said.

"Monday."

"How long was I gone?"

"About two minutes here, but of course, time moves differently in the
land of fairy."

"Of course," she said, bitingly.  "So, it's still Monday, and I've been
gone two minutes.  Ok."  She took another deep breath.  "I need to eat
all the food, then I need to sleep for like five days.  Holy shit."

"Aurelia, *please* tell me what happened!"

"I'm getting there.  Just let me soak in all the normal stuff for a
minute, ok?"

"Ok, sorry," said Stuart, falling silent.  He gazed across the table at
Aurelia, full of admiration and fear and awe and lust and apprehension
and concern.  She sat still, with her eyes closed, apparently drawing
in normalcy through her pores.

After a few minutes of sitting like this, she opened her eyes again.
They were the same grey color they'd always been, but there was something
new in them.  Stuart couldn't tell what it was.

"Let me see if I can remember it from the beginning," she said, looking
at Stuart with an odd expression.  "You were there."

"I was there," he agreed.  "You were grabbed by something, I thought,
but I couldn't see it.  What grabbed you?"

"Oh yes, that's right."  She closed her eyes and took another deep breath.

Chapter

I was grabbed (said Aurelia) by this little green guy.  He was
unbelievably strong.  He just appeared out of nowhere, ha, so I thought
at the time.  He grabbed my arm, and pulled me through the Portal, or the
Dance, or something.  I'm not sure now what it was.  There's some magic
they use to go between worlds.  I guess the worlds don't map too closely
together except at these special places.  I'm hesitating here because
I experienced all the language I'm about to tell you in a language I
don't know.  I understood it, and could make myself understood, but I
don't know what language I was speaking.  I kind of have to translate
a lot of stuff to English if I'm going to tell you about it.

Anyway, he grabbed me and pulled me through.  I was standing in this
weird world where there was snow everywhere.  Well, I call it snow.
It was white, and looked like snow, but it was warm.  The whole place
was weird.  None of it made any sense.  I don't know if I'll even be
able to describe some of it.

So, weird snow-land.  He's got like a dozen little green buddies there,
and they start jabbering at me, and it takes me a moment to realize that
I can understand them, just not with my ears.  It was a weird feeling,
but I was able to tune out my ears, and just listen with the part of me
that understood, whatever that was.  They were telling me about their
Queen, who needed to meet me, something about a prophecy or prediction,
something like that.  I yelled at them to put me back, but they smiled
and giggled and said they couldn't do that.

We walked forever and a day, it felt like hours, but I don't know
how long it really was.  I stuck with them because I didn't want to
get lost.  The place was so weird.  I discovered I was in the Land
of Fairy.  I remembered what you said about eating stuff if you go into
the underworld or fairy worlds, so I didn't eat anything.  Even on the
walk, they offered me fruits and bread and cake and sausage.  God, it
smelled fucking amazing, and I didn't realize I was so hungry.  Then I
stopped listening to them and thought about it, and realized I wasn't
hungry at all.  They were doing something to make me think I was hungry.

I got really mad, then, and told them to quit it.  They put away the
food, but I still felt that hunger-thought lurking somewhere, but I
kind of figured out how to ignore it.  Finally we stopped walking,
and we were in front of this, like, castle.  I guess it was a castle.
It looked like a pile of stones that used to be a castle to me, but on the
inside, it was like a fairy tale, hah!  Fairy tale.  All rugs on the walls
and torches and suits of armor and stuff.  It was like a movie, even.
The inside was way bigger than the outside was, it was totally impossible.

So I walked along with these green guys, and we're joined by these tall
guys, really tall, I've been calling them elves, like that elf in the
hobbit movie, the one with the bow who's really cute.  So they join us,
and then come these big green guys, nothing like the little green guys,
they're like giants, and I found out later they're trolls.  Trolls are
killed by thunder, did you know that?  I didn't.  The trolls had these
big dogs with them.  So we all walked into this huge room with a throne at
the other end, with just tons of candles in candelabras near the ceiling,
it was really bright in there.  Sitting in the throne is this woman who
is totally amazing looking, she's that kind of beautiful you don't get
without hours in the salon and some guy spending hours slaving over your
picture in Photoshop.  But she was real.

Anyway, we get up in front of her, and one of the little green guys
(they all kinda looked the same to me) went forward, and kneeled down on
one knee, and says, "Your majesty, may I present the Seer."  I didn't
know what he was talking about at first, but then everyone turns and
looks at me, and I realize he's talking about me.  This beautiful woman
is the Queen, I figure out.  She's got some guy sitting next to her,
who I figured would be the King, but that's not who he was, and his
throne was way smaller anyway.  So the Queen says to me, "Welcome,
Seer, to our castle."  Then she waits with this funny look on her face,
and one of the big green guys next to me shoves me with his elbow so
I almost tripped over a little green guy, and he said, "Kneel before
your Queen!" out of the side of his mouth.  So I bowed down, not really
knowing what he was telling me to do.

And this is a huge deal.  Everyone in the room kind of whispers to each
other, and I can tell I did something, but I don't know what I did.
The Queen looked at me then, and just kinda stared for a minute.
Then she says, "Welcome, in any case, Seer.  You must be tired from
your journey," and waves her hand and like five guys dressed in sheets
hurry up and lead me off.  I only found out later that you're supposed
to kneel in front of the Queen, not bow.  Bowing is what equals do,
kneeling is what subjects do.

So, these guys in sheets lead me off to a little room, and it's got a
big bed in it, like in a Disney cartoon, with curtains all around it.
And there's a bunch of old looking wood furniture, and these three women
come out with their heads all wrapped up in white cloth.  They sit me down
and undress me, making comments about what weird clothes I'm wearing,
and before I know what's happened, I'm wearing this fancy dress like
Cinderella.  It was really tight and uncomfortable, with a corset; I have
no idea how those people breathe when they're dressed like that.  I didn't
think I was that fat, but I guess they thought I needed slimming down
even more.  They tried to take my bag from me, but I wouldn't let them.
I don't know what happened to my normal clothes, I guess they got taken
away and burned or something.

So I'm standing there in this weird dress, it wasn't totally like
Cinderella, because it wasn't super wide like that, but it was really
fancy, with about four different layers.  Then someone comes in who
looks totally human, and he's got a beard and a sword on his belt, and
he starts asking me questions.  I don't know what he was asking even,
none of it made any sense to me.  Then he leaves, and this other guy
comes in, who looks a lot nicer, he was probably an elf.  He brought me
to this feast, and again, I had to remember that I wasn't really hungry,
but it all smelled so good.  I have no idea what was on that table, it was
nothing I've ever seen before.  It was a real fight not to eat it, though.

I could tell people were looking at me weird, and I figured it was
because I wasn't eating anything, so I put some stuff on my plate, and
imitated what they were doing, using bread and a knife to eat stuff,
but I didn't actually eat anything.  I guess that worked, because people
stopped looking at me.  I ended up dropping half the stuff on my plate
onto the ground under me, and there was this dog there who got to be my
best friend because I kept feeding him.  He was just a normal dog, too,
not one of those fucking awful black dogs I saw after I got mugged.

So this feast happened, and I spent a lot of time not eating and not
drinking even though my brain was trying to tell me I was hungry and
thirsty.  This whole time, no one is really talking to me, no one has
told me why I'm there, nothing.  They're just feasting around me.

Finally, that all wraps up, but not before lots of the guys there
got really rowdy on some kind of beer they were drinking out of horns.
There was a fight, and the girls were up in there as bad as the guys, it
was weird.  Some of those women, though, they were more animal than human.
The Queen looked totally human, but like there was this woman who turned
into a goose or a swan or something, and was taking out guys left and
right with her wings.  I didn't see a lot of it, I ran off with the other
people who didn't want to fight.  I thought I might be able to escape,
but there were these tall guys standing around, obviously guarding us,
and no one else seemed to be leaving.  They had these sort of long-handled
axes, and didn't look like they'd be very forgiving.

So at some point I guess the fighting-people got tired, and I was ushered
back up to my little room (which didn't seem so little now, and I couldn't
tell if it had changed size, or if I was seeing it differently somehow)
and undressed again, and they put me in this long linen dress sort of a
thing, and told me to go to bed.  I didn't want to sleep in this dress,
it looked like A) it would wrinkle like hell, and B) it must have cost a
couple hundred dollars.  You can't find a linen dress like that anywhere.
But they insisted, so I went to bed.

I lay there for a long time, thinking about what to do.  I wanted to get
back, but I didn't know how.  The castle was huge, and I didn't have a
clue where we'd come in, or where any exits were.  Eventually I fell
asleep, but I didn't sleep well.  I had all these visions, like I've
had back in normal life, and they were all scenes of the fairies.

I learned all this stuff, but the most important thing was that the
Queen wanted to use me to re-establish the rule of the fairies in the
world of men.  I thought maybe she was kidding, or had staged the whole
thing for me, but I don't think she was.  She wanted to take over the
world and put fairies back at the top of it.

Chapter

At this point, the food had arrived, and Aurelia fell on it with
a passion, eating so fast Stuart was worried she'd choke herself.
She didn't, however, and she ate everything he'd ordered.  He held back,
unsure how hungry he was himself, and soon found himself staring at a
field of conquered plates.

He looked across the table at her, and wondered at her changed appearance.
Now that he'd had a chance to study her face in more detail, he thought
he saw subtle changes, as if she'd aged a year or two in her absence.
He thought that was absurd, but the whole tale was absurd so far.
She'd been gone two minutes, and no amount of reading fairy tales had
prepared him for the reality of someone disappearing and reappearing
two minutes later having lived days in those two minutes.

Yet the evidence was clear.  There was simply no way she could have pulled
off that kind of disappearing act.  Two minutes was enough time to change
clothes, he figured, but why would she go to all this trouble to fool him?
How would she add age to her face?  It didn't look like makeup.  In fact,
the makeup she had been wearing was completely gone, although she had
some kind of red stain on her lips that he thought might have been a
fruit juice.  It certainly wasn't lip balm, which was all she'd been
wearing before.

He marvelled that he was sitting in the presence of actual evidence
for the existence of fairies, and a land of fairies, and some kind of
teleportation, and maybe even time travel.  He found himself getting
wound up in the speculation of it all, and was only pulled back to the
present when Aurelia's head drooped, nearly hitting the table.

He stood up quickly, and moved around the table to support her head,
unsure what exactly to do.  He sat down next to her, and said, "Do you
need to sleep?  You look like you're just about to pass out."

"Yeah," she said, picking herself up again.  "Yeah, I do."

"Well... shit."  Stuart considered his options.  He could try taking he
back to her apartment, but he had no idea where it was.  He just knew that
she rode a bus to get to the library.  That didn't seem like a good plan.
This meal was going to wipe out his discretionary cash for the month,
and he didn't think adding a taxi ride on top of that sounded like
a good idea.  His dorm room wasn't too far, but that would mean he'd
have to explain to Shawn what a beautiful woman was doing in his bunk,
which would be embarrassing at the very least.  Shawn already kind of
hated Stuart for being so nerdy, and Stuart strongly disliked Shawn in
the same instinctive way nerds always dislike jocks.  Shawn was from
Idaho, and had gotten to UW on a football scholarship, and was one of the
reasons Stuart spent as much time as he did in the library and anywhere
else that wasn't his dorm room.

"I don't know where you live, but my dorm is close.  Do you live around
here?"  Aurelia didn't respond, already half way asleep.  "Aurelia!
Do you live around here?"  She shook her head no, and Stuart suspected
that was as much as he was going to get out of her.

Making the decision, he gently laid her head on the table, clearing
plates out of the way first.  He went up to the hostess and offered up
his emergency-funds credit card.  Bill paid (he grimaced at how much
money that just cost him), he returned to the table and coaxed Aurelia
to her feet.  Half-supporting her uncomfortably, Stuart standing slightly
shorter than Aurelia, and weighing nearly the same, they made their slow,
stumbling way.  It was half a mile back to Stuart's dorm, and it took
them nearly half an hour to get there.

Chapter

Stuart sat stiffly in the chair, his anxiety increasing by the minute.
Shawn, his roommate, hadn't returned yet, but he expected him any minute.
Technically, dorm rooms weren't supposed to be co-ed in this way: a woman
sleeping in a men's dorm room was against the rules, but everyone did
it, and that wasn't so much the concern.  The problem was that Shawn's
simmering dislike of his roommate might well cause him to complain to the
RA, which could not only get Stuart in trouble, but (much more important
to Stuart at the moment) would mean Aurelia would have to leave.

He'd gotten her in the room, and more or less tumbled her into bed.
Her shoes, such as they were, came off with a tug, and he hadn't dared any
further undressing.  Unfortunately for him, the bottom bunk was Shawn's.
These facts all conspired to have Stuart feeling like a sacrifical animal
eyeing the sun's steady progress toward the horizon.


Aurelia slept fitfully, tossing and turning uncomfortably every few
minutes.  Occasionally she would say something in what Stuart presumed
was Gaelic, because it certainly wasn't English.  Stuart had tried to
occupy himself with reading, and with web surfing, but he was too
distracted, and ended up just sitting by the bed, being anxious.

After another 20 minutes of this, the door opened, and Stuart was faced
with Shawn, insolently barging into the room.  Stuart looked up at him
mutely, wishing that he would just turn around and leave.  He didn't
see any way this could go well.

Shawn looked up and saw Stewart sitting in one of the tiny room's two
chairs by the bed.  His gaze went to the bed, then back to Stuart.
"Why's that bitch in my bed," he said, without particular rancor beyond
his normal baseline dislike of Stuart.

Stuart shot to his feet, and before he could stop himself, he had
shouted, "She's not a bitch!"

"Woah, calm down little turd, I was just asking a question.  You
gonna go all tweaky on me?"

Stuart subsided, suddenly aware that he was attempting to pick a fight
with someone he considered vastly inferior in everything that mattered,
but who could still pick him up and throw him a substantial distance.
Shawn hadn't ever done more than threaten Stuart, but Stuart was quite
sure the threats could be carried out, at least the more physically
probable ones.

"No, sorry Shawn.  She was falling over tired, I couldn't get her to
climb the ladder."

Shawn leaned down and got a closer look as Aurelia twitched into a
different position.  "Hey, she's cute!  Where'd you find her?"  Shawn's
usual repartee included offering mustache rides or offering to rock a
woman's world, which Stuart was repulsed to find worked so frequently.
At least, Shawn frequently flagged off the dorm room, which Stuart
presumed meant he'd found another sexual conquest.

"You wouldn't like her, Shawn, she's got a brain."

"Huh," said Shawn, apparently not in the mood for a fight this time.
He stood up again, looked sneeringly at Stuart, and dropped his duffel
bag on the tiny expanse of floor, occupying a large portion of it.
"Don't mess with my shit.  I'll be back later, Stewie."  He put an ugly
sneer on Stuart's name that made him bridle, but Stuart knew from long
experience that aggravating bullies was satisfying only up until the
point they beat you up, and that trigger point was more or less
impossible to judge.  Shawn turned, and with a glance back at Aurelia,
said, "That bitch better be out of my bed before I get back tonight,
Stewie.  Get your rufie-bait in your own bed."  He slammed the door
behind him as he left.

Chapter

Stuart did eventually pounce on a moment when Aurelia started awake in
the bed, and convinced her to climb into the upper bunk.  He offered to
get her water or anything else to eat, but she said she didn't want
anything, and was alseep again moments later.

She slept through that night and into the previous day, only waking up
again as the sun was sliding toward the horizon through partial clouds,
promising a beautiful if early sunset.  Stuart couldn't tell, as his
window faced to the east, and all he could see was a darkening sky.

He stood watch the whole time, only leaving the room to use the
bathroom or grab snacks from one of the vending machines.  Shawn
returned very late that night, drunk and reeking of alcohol.  He fell
into his own bed with a minimum of abuse hurled at Stuart, and passed
out until morning, when he awoke early for football practice.

It was a nervous time for Stuart.  He didn't know what rules the
fairies might operate by, assuming there were any rules at all.  He was
afraid she might disappear again at any moment, and if the stories were to
be believed, she might reappear again in a minute and be 70 years older,
or she might appear again in 100 years having aged only a few minutes.
He didn't think there was anything he could do to stop it from happening,
although after a review of some of the fairy literature, he found a bible
and a couple of wrought iron candlesticks belonging to other dorm
inhabitants, and put them in the bed with Aurelia.

When she did finally wake up, Aurelia looked around her, and, spotting
Stuart, asked the obvious question.  "Where am I?"

Stuart answered, "My dorm room.  I couldn't think of anywhere else you
could sleep that we could get to."

Aurelia scrambled into a corner of the bed, hunching in on herself.
"Oh shit, we didn't..."

"No!" said Stuart, anguish playing at the edge of his voice.  "No.  I
put you in the bed, and have been sitting here.  I didn't touch you,
I'm sorry, I didn't know where else..."  His face fell, and he came
close to crying, so great was his emotion.  Aurelia saw his normal
crazy-quilt of emotion flowing in all directions, and relaxed a little.

"What happened?  Did we eat here?  Or was that a dream, and I'm stuck
in Faerie now?"  Her own agitation increased as she tried to figure out
what was real.

"No, that was real!  We had lunch, well, we had a meal anyway,
yesterday late morning.  You've been asleep since then.  You
disappeared for two minutes of my time, and said you were gone for four
days.  You told me part of the story, ending with having visions in the
Queen's castle about how she wanted to use you to conquer the world of
men.  Then you ate more food than I've seen anyone eat before, and I
brought you back here.  You could barely stand, you were so tired.  I
couldn't tell... was that real?  Did all that stuff really happen to
you?"

Aurelia blinked slowly, and ran her hands through her hair, removing a
small twig.  "Ugh, I need a shower."  Her attention focused back to
Stuart.  "Yeah.  That was all real.  Shit.  I have more to tell you,
but," she looked down at herself, and took in her clothing, "I think I
need a shower and new clothes first."

Stuart looked uncomfortably about.  It was a co-ed dorm building, and
there were womens' bathrooms, but he didn't have any clothes he thought
would fit her.  In any case, the thought of Aurelia wearing his clothes
did weird things to his head.  "I don't..." he started.

"No, I'm going back to my place," said Aurela, guessing the source of
his discomfort.  "We're at the U, right?  This is UW?"

"Yeah."

"Ugh.  Where's my bag?"  She looked around, trying to spot her shoulder
bag.  Stuart handed it up to her.  It was shredded, nearly destroyed.
"Shit," she said, looking into it and pulling out the contents.  There
were several flinty rocks, a short stick that had been crudely
sharpened, and a thoroughly smashed cell phone.  "I guess I need a new
phone.  Crap."  She sat back against the wall, a dejected look on her
face.  "I forgot about that."

"How did that happen," said Stuart, picking up the smashed phone and
examining it.

"I think it was when I was running from the Daoine Sidhe."  She said the
words unselfconsciously, although they were clearly not English.
Stuart's expression must have registered with her, because she paused,
then said, "I just said Daoine Sidhe, didn't I.  Um.  That means
fairies, pretty much.  It's what they call themselves.  But yeah, I was
running through this wild canyon before I found another Portal and got
myself out.  That must be where, ha," she paused, shaking the bag
upside down to ensure there was nothing else in it before continuing,
"I dropped my wallet, keys, make up, and everything else.  Shit."  She
sat back, looking defeated.  "How am I supposed to go home now?"

"Doesn't anyone else have a copy of your keys or anything?"

"No, I don't think so.  Ugh, it's hard to think about this stuff.  I
feel like I've spent the last year fighting fairies and running and
court intriguing and all that.  It all feels so small and stupid to
worry about keys."

"I think the word you want is 'mundane'," said Stuart, shrinking back
into himself a bit.  He had stood there looking stupid while his
friend, his beautiful, wonderful friend he secretly hoped he might some
day marry, fought off fairies and ran through a magical land looking
for an escape route.  It was straight out of half the books, D&D
adventures, movies and video games he'd experienced, and he had been
the idiot schmuck sitting there, letting it happen.  "I'm sorry."

"No, it's not you.  It's just, I can't believe I'm going to be stopped
by something this mundane, like you said.  I can't wrap my brain around
how to do it, though.  Maybe I can just shower here.  Do you have any
female friends who are about my size?  Maybe I could borrow clothes
from one of them."

"No," said Stuart, feeling a surge of panic rise within himself, "I
don't know anyone who's like you.  I mean, shit.  No.  Sorry.  I don't
have any female friends really, and the only girls I know even a little
bit aren't your size, I guess."  He could outmaneuver all sorts of
devious tricks from his dungeon master, and Stuart felt lost at the
prospect of helping a real person with what should be a simple real
world problem.

"Ok, stop it Stuart.  Let's stop thinking negatively like this.  My
brain still feels fuzzy, but between the two of us, this should be a
solveable problem, right?  What are the immediate problems?"  Aurelia
tried to stop the feeling that she needed to be running from something.

"Well, um.  You need a shower.  You need new clothes.  You could shower
here, but that doesn't solve the clothes problem.  I don't know anyone
well enough to borrow clothes from them.  You have clothes at home I
guess, but you can't get in there because you don't have your keys.  So
you need keys.  Wait, if we lose our keys here, the RA has a copy, do
you live in an apartment?  Would your landlord have keys?"

"Oh yeah, they would.  There's a manager who lives in 301, I could
check with her.  But, of course," she said, holding up the dead phone
and grimacing, "her number was in here."

"I bet there's a listing online," said Stuart, turning to the computer.
Here at least was an area where he felt he could be useful.  "What is
your address?"

Aurelia rattled off her address, on Summit.  Stuart typed it in, and 30
seconds later had the number for the building's management company on
the screen.  He dialed it into his phone, and handed it to Aurelia.
"Tell them you lost your keys, and need to get in to your apartment.
They can call you back here.  Hit that button to make the call."

Aurelia did so, and in a minute had arranged to meet the manager at her
front door to be let in.  They didn't have spare keys, but would get a
set made (adding a $50 key replacement fee to her rent that month, of 
course), for tomorrow.  She hung up the phone and handed it back to
Stuart.

"Ok, that's that problem down.  Will you go with me on the bus?  When
does the bus come?  Look up the 43, that's what I usually take."

"Sure, I've already skipped my classes for today," he said it
nonchalantly, but couldn't tell if he'd pulled it off.  Stuart didn't
exactly live for school, but it was a valued constant in his life.

Aurelia didn't seem to notice.  "Thank you.  I guess I just don't want
to be alone right now.  If you see me fighting off something like that
again, pull me away from whatever it is.  Do you have anything made of
iron?"

"I found those candlesticks.  I need to get them back to Clarice, but
we could take them with us.  Does iron really work against fairies?"

Aurelia took up one of the candlesticks and hefted it thoughtfully.
"Yes.  It definitely does."

Chapter

They made it back to Aurelia's apartment without incident, and although
her manager gave her a bit of a raised eyebrow upon seeing Stuart,
made no comment.  They walked inside, and Aurelia was vastly relieved
to see everything was as she'd left it.  She didn't know what she'd
expected, exactly, but she'd had some vague fear it would have been
torn up or burglarized.  She let out a sigh she hadn't realized she'd
been holding in.

"Everything ok?" asked Stuart, looking around.  Her usual array of
stuff was scattered around, although it was a bit cleaner than usual
after a recent cleaning binge.  They set down the candlesticks on the
coffee table.

"Yeah, it's fine.  It's really nice to be home.  If you want to hang
out, it should only take me half an hour or so to get cleaned up.  I
think I owe you dinner, becuase I'm sure I didn't pay for whatever we
ate when I got back."

"Oh, no," said Stuart, his chivalrous heart swelling within him, "you
don't owe me anything.  I mean, I'm glad I was able to help you, I
still feel like a jerk for just watching you get pulled in like that.
I don't know how I can apologize enough."

"Well, we'll figure it out.  I'll be out in a little while, grab a
drink if you want, or if there's any food you see in the kitchen, feel
free."  Aurelia walked into her bedroom and closed the door, breathing
deeply and slowly letting the breath out.

When she opened her eyes again, it was a rude shock to see the little
man in the red overalls looking at her.  She shrieked, which made
Stuart jump up in alarm, and hover nervously outside her door.  "What
is it!?" he called through the door, unwilling to barge in on the off
chance that she was undressing within 10 seconds of closing the door.

Aurelia was only peripherally aware of Stuart outside the door.  Her
attention was focused on the little man.  "What the fuck do you want,
you little freak!?"  She dove across the bed to the nightstand, and
scrabbled for the iron knife, which she had desperately wished she'd
had in the Land of Faerie.  Whipping it out of its sheath, she flashed
the blade at the little man, who took a step back.  "Well!?  What do
you want!?"  Aurelia was in no mood to play nice.  "Are you going to
say anything?  Come on!"

"You went away," he said, enigmatically.

"You fucking bet I went away!  Did you have anything to do with that?
I'll fucking find out what iron does to you if you did!"  She advanced
on him, and he backed away again.  Stuart finally overcame is
reluctance, and pushed the door open.

"Who are you talking to?  What's going on?"

"Get out, Stuart, close that door!"

Stuart looked at the figure of Aurelia, standing in a very respectable
fighting crouch with a little archaic-looking knife in her hand, facing
off against something he couldn't see.  Her face was tense but determined.
He was desperate to know what was going on, but decided she had things
under control.  He said, "I'm right here if you need me," and quickly
pulled the door shut.

She looked back to the little brownie, but he had vanished.  She
yelled, "Fuck!" through clenched teeth, and looked around the room.  He
was nowhere to be seen.  "You better come back and talk to me, you
little shit.  I'll have answers over this one."  When he didn't
re-appear after a pause, she relaxed, and put the knife slowly and
deliberately back into its sheath.  "I've learned a few other tricks
too, so don't imagine I need this to make you pay," she said, shaking
the knife at the room.

She dropped the woolen dress onto the floor and changed quickly into a
bath robe, as the bathroom didn't connect with the bedroom.  She grabbed
some mostly-clean clothes to change into once she was done, and walked
briskly through the living room to the bathroom.  "It's ok," she said,
as she saw Stuart get up from the couch.  "I have a brownie here, and
that's who I was hah, talking to."  She said it with scorn, glancing back
at the room.  "He's harmless, as far as I can tell.  There are probably
other house spirits here too, but I've never seen them.  I'll be out in
a little while."  She went into the bathroom and closed the door.

Stuart looked uneasily around the room, wondering where the house
spirits were, and what they might be able to do to him.

Chapter

An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha looked around her throne room
imperiously, hiding her glee.  Her forces were gathering.  The Seer had
escaped, but no matter.  They had met face to face, and she had a much
clearer idea who she was dealing with now.  A mere girl!  Men had not
advanced at all since she went to sleep.  The Seer had been unschooled
and ignorant, and would be easy to use.

She beckoned over one of her advisers.  "Tell me, a-Dhomhaill, when the
Seer was here, did her maids in waiting do as I requested?"  Domhnaill
nodded serenely, his putrid locks falling over his face as he nodded.

"Yes, my Queen.  We have a lock of her hair, as well as the clothing
she was wearing.  Most curious clothing it was, as well.  Very
lightweight, out of a stuff no one has been able to recognize."

"Bring me the hair.  I would commune with our new Seer."

"As you wish, majesty," he said, bowing out of her presence.

An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha let her glamour drop, and sat on her
throne, hunched and thoughtful.  Her grey, scraggly hair writhed down
her back, and she sucked unconsciously at one of her blackened teeth.

Chapter

Aurelia appeared from the shower fresh and clean, and considerably
happier than she had been.  There had been no more supernatural
appearances during her ablutions, and the effects of hot water, soap
and shampoo had been transformative.   She emerged from the steamy
bathroom feeling very nearly normal.

She beamed at Stuart, and said, "So much better."

"You look more like you again," he said, immediately second guessing
his words, but she didn't seem to be bothered.

"I feel more like me again.  Move over."  She sat down on the couch
next to him, and Stuart thought he was going to swoon from the fresh
hot scent of her as he scooted sideways to make way for her.  She
shoved a layer of magazines and mail off the table, and unearthed a
laptop computer.  She opened it up, and opened up her Facebook page.
She emitted a startled, "Oh," and Stuart looked to see that she had a
large number of messages and notifications showing.

He looked away as she clicked on the messages, self-consciously
endeavoring not to read her mail.  "Oh, crap," she said, and started
typing furiously.

Stuart couldn't contain himself, and glanced briefly at the screen
before saying, "What's wrong?"

"Oh, it's Jenn.  She's like my best friend.  She got worried when I
didn't return text messages.  I'm just letting her know what's up.  We
should go to dinner, and I'll tell you both my story.  She knows about
some of this stuff, but obviously not what happened in Faerie."  Stuart
noticed that she put an odd inflection on the word Faerie.

"Ok.  Do you mind if I use your bathroom before that?"

"No, go ahead.  You'll probably have to move the towel, sorry."

"No problem."  Stuart disappeared into the bathroom.

Aurelia got Jenn on chat, and told her what was going on.  They
arranged to meet at the Six Arms in half an hour.  It was a short walk
from both their apartments.  Aurelia told Jenn about Stuart, and
deflected more jocular ribbing about her intentions with him.  "im not
interstd but he's been super helpful," she wrote.  "i def owe him dinner.
he's been really kind."

He reappeared, and Aurelia let him in on the plan.

"Ok," he said.  "What do we do until then?"

"I'm not sure what you're going to do, but I'm going to respond to
these messages.  There are like five people who think I'm dead.  I
didn't realize I get so many text messages in a day."

Chapter

The Six Arms was a McMenamins pub, part of a chain which stretched
through Washington and Oregon.  It featured a sort of imperial chic
decor, and was split into two levels.  They chose a table near the back
on the upper level.

Aurelia introduced Jenn and Stuart, then Aurelia and Stuart tag-teamed
getting Jenn up to speed on what had happened in the last day and a half.
Aurelia picked up the story where she'd left off, stuck in the Queen's
castle late at night.


"So, that first night, I couldn't sleep," said Aurelia, resuming the
tale.  "I had all these visions, and they were all about fairies.  The
important one was a conversation between the Queen and some other
fairies.  I didn't know who they were.  She was talking about some plan
to take over the world of men, and how she needed the Seer -- that's me
-- to do it.  But it didn't last long enough to understand how she was
going to do it.

"I saw a bunch of other weird scenes of fairies.  Some of them were
just living life, some were talking, some were just walking around.
Just like when I have visions here.  I didn't really understand any of
it.  I ended up meeting some of the fairies I had visions about, well
just one really, but I probably met others and didn't know it."

"Were there lots of fairies?" interrupted Stuart, unable to contain the
question.

"Maybe?  I couldn't really tell.  It was like a movie with knights and
stuff.  That era.  Everyone was dressed in old style clothes like that,
and I couldn't tell some of them apart.  There were lots of different
kinds of creatures there, though.  Not just the human shaped ones, but
also all sorts of other shapes.

"Anyway, I saw the sun rising through my little window, and decided I
had to do something.  I didn't know what exactly I should do, but I
figured if I could escape the castle, maybe I could figure something
out.  The window opened, but it looked like it was a hundred feet in
the air, and I wasn't about to try jumping.  I figured out later that
lots of things in Tir na Tuatha aren't the way they seem, so it's
possible I was on a ground floor.  I'll probably never know.

"My door wasn't locked, and so I grabbed my bag and slipped out.  At
that point, I still had all my stuff: wallet, keys, phone, and so on.
The phone didn't have any signal, and the clock was totally messed up.
It couldn't have been later than 7 am, but the clock showed 10 pm.  I
checked it a few other times, and it never made any sense.  I think
time works really differently there, but I wasn't thinking much about
that.  It ran out of charge before the end of that day.

"Anyway, so I had my bag, and I was dressed in this wrinkled linen
slip/dress thing.  They took my shoes away, but I found some leather
slippers that pretty much fit, and put those on.  There wasn't anything
iron anywhere, I definitely noticed that.  The dream-woman was right,
the Daoine Sidhe hate iron.  There was no one around except some
servants, or anyway people who looked really busy.  I was able to hide
from them.  I wandered around the castle for what felt like hours, but
couldn't find anything that looked like a door out.  Every time I thought
I found one, it turned out to lead to some other part of the castle.
From the outside, I could have sworn the whole castle was the size of
a big house, maybe twice the size of this place," she waved around to
encompass the restaurant.  "But inside, it was *huge*.  I found the
kitchens, and the stable, and a bunch of other places I didn't
understand.  There was a whole level of storerooms, with boxes and
bundles and barrels, but I didn't know what any of it was.  Nothing was
labeled.

"Finally, after what felt like most of a day of wandering, I found a
little door from a deserted kitchen that led to the outside.  I never
ran into the Queen or any of the Daoine from the court chamber.  Every
once in a while I'd see a servant from far off, but most of the castle
was empty.  It was kind of creepy, and a lot of it was really dark.  I
had a sort of magic lantern I found at one point, which was made of
brass and had a light in it that didn't seem to be a flame, and wasn't
like a light bulb or anything.

"So I went out this door, and I was outside, finally!  Only now I
didn't know what I was supposed to do.  I've never been camping except
once in college, and that time it was just car camping.  There were
definitely no cars here.  There were also no bathrooms or toilet paper
or showers or anything like that.  I don't think the Daoine Sidhe bathe.

"It was actually near the end of the day, and the sun was setting.  I
wasn't cold yet, but I would be before long.  The dress I was in was
one thin layer, and I didn't have anything warm with me.  I didn't
think about it.  I thought about going back into the castle, but that
didn't seem to be a good idea.  I didn't know what they wanted with me,
but I know for sure I didn't want to be part of letting fairies take
over our world.  So, I just started walking toward the sun, figuring at
least then I'd have a direction, 'cause the sun always sets in the
west.

"When I looked back at the castle, it was that ruin again, just a pile
of rocks that had maybe once been a castle.  The tallest part of it was
only 20 feet tall, at most.  I couldn't see anywhere I would have been
so high up, and I think the view out was fake.  I couldn't even see the
door I'd come out, although I'd seen it right when I came out.

"So, I walked.  When it got too dark to see where the sunset was, I
stopped.  I remember someone telling me that when you walk around lost in
the woods, you're most likely to walk in circles unless you know where
you're going.  I didn't want to trip on anything, either.  So I stopped
by this big rock, and tore up a bunch of grass to try to make a little
bed to lie down on.  It started to get cold really quickly.  There
wasn't any snow any more."  Aurelia looked at Jenn, who looked
confused, and said, "When I first got there, there was all this stuff
lying around that looked like snow, but it wasn't cold.  But then, I
think I showed up in the afternoon, and I spent that first night inside
the castle, so I didn't know what the temperatures were like that first
night.

"I lay myself down on this bed, and it was the first time in my life I
seriously considered praying.  I was scared, I mean not terrified or
anything, but here I was, lost and alone in a weird world, I had no
idea how I'd gotten there, no idea how to get back, nothing.  I decided
that if anyone was going to save me, though, it was probably me.  So I
looked around, and kind of piled up branches and leaves and grass and
stuff, and made a little shelter I could crawl into.  There were
probably bugs and spiders and stuff in there, but I didn't care.  I was
so tired, and being scared didn't help any.  I was also hungry,
actually hungry this time, and I thought about eating, but I didn't
have anything to eat, and I was still trying to not eat anything there,
so I wouldn't get stuck.

"Well, I must have picked a special spot to lie down, and after an hour
of lying in my little shelter trying to fall asleep and failing, there
was this noise, really pretty music, and then light, and I saw all these
little tiny Daoine filing into a clearing near this big rock.  They had
little tables they set up, and they set out this feast.  Oh god, it
smelled so good.  I would have given anything to eat some of their food
at this point.  My stomach must have growled or something, and scared
them off.  They screamed and ran away, and left all that food there.
Oh, it was so tempting.  I was just getting ready to crawl out and eat
some, when the dream-woman suddenly appeared.

"She was just this black shadow against the sky, but I could tell it
was her.  She was a lot older, though.  I thought, in the dream, that
she was human, but maybe she was Daoine Sidhe too.  Anyway, she stood
over me for a minute, and I stopped trying to get to the food.  She
didn't say anything, but leaned down, and did something, kind of waved
her hands over me, and I wasn't as hungry any more.  I don't know if it
was magic or what.  I was still kind of hungry, but I didn't feel like
I desperately needed to eat.  I said thank you to her, and she just
shook her head and tsk'd at me.  Finally she said something, she said,
'You've come all this way, Nighean Mor' (I think that means big girl)
'and 'twould be a shame to lose out now.'

"I asked her what she meant, and she shook her head again.  'I cannot
help you here, not the help you need, but I can at least make your task
easier.  You know your business, best be about it soon as the sun rises
again.'  I told her I didn't know what she was talking about, but she
just got up and walked away.  I must have fallen asleep, and I was
seriously doubting whether she was real or not, but when I woke up, the
fairy tables were still there, and the food was all gone.  I know I
didn't eat it, and I also know I wasn't super hungry any more, so I
think she was real and maybe she took it away when she left."

At this point, the food they'd ordered arrived, and Aurelia suspended
her narration while they ate.

Chapter


An Cailleag Seann de na Tuatha presided over the night's feast, but her
mind wasn't present at the event.  She even let one of the more
rambunctious members of her retinue perch a roast venison shank on her
shoulder, and only noticed when a hound leapt up to snatch it away.
She snarled at the beast, but it didn't notice, occupied as it was with
its tasty prize.

She stood abruptly, which quieted the feasters.  "I tire of this
frivolity!" she declared.  "Continue if you must."  She turned, and
stalked out of the hall, followed by a few uncertain attendants, who
were torn between their duty to her and their desire to remain with the
revels.  When she noticed them, she sent them scattering with a wave of
her hand, and they needed no second warning.  She continued alone.

She ascended the stairs to her chambers.  The lamps were lit, as was
the fire, and she sat on the low stool which stood in front of the fire.  
She had many plans to ponder, but found herself unable to wrench her
thoughts away from the lock of human hair sitting on the table across
the room.

She stood and circled it, savoring the anticipation of the moment.
What would the Seer be doing?  Her minions had started returning with
news of the outside world, and it was apparently strange beyond
believing.  Men had created magic of their own, which didn't require
what she thought of as normal magic.  Giant metal dragons flew through
the air with stiff wings.  Buildings towered to the sky, clad with
shiny metallic armor.  Men and women roamed the land in colorful glass
and metal carriages on thick wheels.  It was hard to believe.  Except
for her brief moment above the mound, the Queen had remained in the
Tir na Tuatha.  That brief moment had looked exactly as it had so long
ago, perhaps with fewer trees and more heather than she remembered.

Finally, she could restrain herself no longer, and An Cailleag Seann de
na Tuatha took up the lock of dark brown hair tied with blue ribbon.

Chapter

As they ate, Aurelia continued her narration.

"So, the sun came up, and I saw where I was.  It was a clearing, and
those little fairy tables didn't last long -- they sort of disappeared,
I think they turned into mist somehow.  I never touched one, so I don't
know if they were real, or if they were some kind of illusion.
Anothing thing I'll probably never know.  I took stock: I had my bag,
with makeup being the only thing that might be useful, although I
didn't know how it might help.  The wallet and keys and phone were all
so much dead weight, but I wasn't about to get rid of them.  I had
other random stuff in there, papers and a nail file and other random
junk, but none of it was useful."

Stuart interrupted again, "You had a nail file?  Doesn't that count as
iron?  Wouldn't that have been useful?"

"Oh, no, it was one of those soft ones, an emery board.  It's made of
foam or something.  Well, it was.  I don't know where it ended up.  I
ended up running a few times, and a lot of stuff must have bounced out
then.

"So anyway, I was in this clearing next to a big rock.  The rock didn't
look like anything special, it was just this big boulder.  I saw where
the sun came up, and I didn't think it was where I came from, but it
was hard to be sure.  It's not like there were streets I was following
or anything.  There was just wilderness all around me.  I was cold in
the night, and I don't think I slept very well, but it warmed up when
the sun came up, and I was ok in my linen dress.

"The land I was in was pretty nice, lots of pretty trees, and sort of
rolling hills and little streams.  It still seemed like a movie, sort
of fake somehow.  I didn't know what to do, but I didn't want to keep
still.  I was afraid the Queen's people would come looking for me, so I
wanted to keep going away from the castle.  I realized, though, that I
was going the opposite direction than the way we came in.  We must have
walked more or less west from the portal to the castle, and I was
headed away from the place I appeared in Tir na Tuatha.  But I didn't
want to go back past the castle, since I figured that's where I was
most likely to run into other Daoine who might report back to the
Queen, or even be working for her.

"So I just kept walking.  I didn't have as obvious a direction once the
sun rose.  I couldn't tell where it had risen, and it wasn't obvious
where it would set.  I think I ended up walking in circles some.

"Eventually, I came to this little hut, sort of like in the dream -- in
the dream, the dream-woman's hut had these low stone walls, and this
thick straw roof.  This hut was like that, but it looked nicer.  Maybe
the walls were taller or something."

At this point, Aurelia paused, and looked down at the table for a
moment.  Stuart, alarmed at the expression on her face, leaned in and
said, "Are you ok?  Aurelia?"  Jenn shook Aurelia's shoulder, and she
came back to herself.

"What's up, Aurey?"

"Nothing.  I just felt weird for a moment.  Sort of a headache or
something.  I'm fine now."  She shook her head, and ate another french
fry, delicately dipping it in mustard first.  "Probably just
after-effects of this whole weird thing.

"Anyway.  I was at this hut.  It was really tiny, though; it was
probably half the size of the one from the dream.  I found the door and
looked in.  It wasn't locked, and I saw this woman inside.  For a
moment, I thought it might be the dream-woman, but she wasn't shaped
right.  The woman in this hut was short and kind of fat, but not like
grotesque fat or anything.  Just plump.  She was sweeping up the floor,
which was dirt, like the dream hut.  She looked up when I looked in,
and said, 'Hello my dear.  Are you lost?'

"She seemed really nice, and I realized that I had seen her before.
She was one of the Daoine I'd seen in a vision.  I didn't remember what
the vision was, just that I'd seen her.  And I realized I knew her
name.  I said, 'Oh, hello Mab!' and she looked at me really weird for a
minute.  Then she said, 'Good to meet you.  What's your name, dear?'  I
told her, and she said, 'Such an unusual name,' then stood there
looking at me for another minute.  She invited me in, and by ducking, I
was able to get through the door and into the little house.  I could
just stand up in the center.  I realized she was about four feet tall.

"She had me sit down on the floor, and I did.  'I almost had you for an
elf,' she said, and motioned to show how tall I was.  'No,' I said,
'I'm human.'

"That really made her look at me.  She gave me this look.  Then she
said, 'Human?  I haven't seen a child of man in these parts for, well,
I don't know how long.  Are you hungry, dear?'  I don't think she was
trying to tempt me, but I got kind of upset, and she calmed me down,
saying she didn't mean anything by it.  That kind of gave her the clue,
I guess, and she said, 'Are you wanting to leave, then?  Tir na Tuatha
isn't the place for you.'  I said, 'Yes please,' and she sat down, all
thoughtful.

"'Leaving Tir na Tuatha isn't too hard, you just have to find the right
place.  How did you get to be here?'  I told her I was grabbed by these
little green guys, and they took me to see the Queen.  That got her
attention, and her eyes got real big, then she got angry, and started
storming around and cursing.  I asked her what was wrong, and she
actually spat on the ground.  'I curse the ground that foul witch
treads!' she said.  But she said it really quietly, like she was afraid
someone might be listening.  I looked around, but I didn't see anyone.

"Then she calmed down a bit, and said, 'If the Queen is interested in
you, then so am I.  Tell me, dear, what did she say to you?'  I told
her about the little introduction I had, and how I made everyone gasp
and whisper to each other by bowing, and she had a good laugh at that.
She said, 'Oh, my dear, you must have surprised her.  Upon greeting
the Queen, one must kneel.  The only people who bow are other royalty.
The fact that you weren't forcibly knelt down means she doesn't know
if you're royalty or not.  Oh, that is delightful.'  She actually wiped
tears from her eyes, she was laughing so much.  She was really enjoying
the idea of the Queen not knowing what to do.

"She said, 'I will help you, Aurelia.'  She pronounced it strangely,
with the R rolled like in Spanish.  It was actually kind of pretty, I
wish I could do it now.  She said the idea of working against the Queen
was enough motivation for her.  She had me sit there while she dug
through some stuff.  She came up with a cloak for me, which was kind of
small, but it was a lot warmer than what I was wearing.  She also found
a sort of walking stick for herself, and put some food into a bag, then
she led me outside.

"She pointed with her stick, and said, 'You see yon hills?'  She
actually used a word that felt like 'yon' to me.  The whole language
thing was definitely surreal.  Anyway, I said I did, and she told me
that was where a gate was to be found.  I asked her where the castle
was, and she said she wasn't sure which one I meant.  I described it to
her, and she said that was what they all looked like.  We started
walking toward the hills.

"We walked for a little while without saying anything, but then I
guess she saw my ring.  She asked about it, and I told her the story of
getting it, the big fairy with the bat wings, all that.  She seemed
impressed.  She said that it was true that I was chosen, but probably
not the way I thought.  I asked her what she meant, and she said, and I
will never forget this, that I was chosen at birth.  That I'm
fairy-born.  I'm part Daoine Sidhe."

She stopped, as the eyes of both Jenn and Stuart were fixed
unwaveringly on her.  Jenn spoke first.  "Does that mean you're, like,
magic?"  Stuart nodded his assent to the question.

"I guess so?  I asked her what that meant, and she just shrugged like
maybe she didn't know.  When I asked again, the only thing she said was
that I had some fairy in my ancestry.  I guess no one who's just human
gets chosen, like the ring rejects them or something."

"Wait, does that mean that any fairy-born person could wear the ring?
What does the ring mean?"  Stuart eyed the gold ring on Aurelia's
finger with a new repect.

"She didn't seem to know," answered Aurelia, holding her hand up to the
light to examine the ring again.  "Or if she did know, she didn't tell
me.  I had the impression she wasn't telling me everything.  We walked
more, and she didn't say anything else.  I'm pretty good at staying in
my own head, so I just thought about stuff as we walked.  I was glad to
be with her, though, since I would have gotten totally lost.  She
followed all these little trails and paths that I wouldn't even have
seen.

"Eventually, I got to thinking about the fairies, and I asked Mab why
she hated the Queen so much.  She smirked at me, and said, 'The Queen
took over Tir na Tuatha by force.  I used to be the ruler of this land.'
I looked at her then, and she didn't look like she was joking.  I said,
'You used to be the queen here?' and she nodded yes.  I asked how she
took over, and Mab just shook her head, and said it was a long story
involving a lot of politics.  I asked what the Queen's name was, and
Mab shook her head again.  She said even uttering her name would call
attention to us, and it was better to just call her the Queen.

"I kept asking her about it, and eventually she said that a long time
ago, she had been queen.  It had been mostly peaceful, but then these
new people had come in, were called the Tuatha de Danaan," Aurelia
paused, realized she'd used non-English words, and said, "that means
the People of Dana, I think.  Everyone there called themselves the
People, but the word they were saying with their mouths was Tuatha or
Daoine," Aurelia pronounced the words as "too-ha" and "doyn-nyuh."  "I
guess the new Queen came in and there was this big war, and a bunch of
Daoine died, which is a big deal, because they don't normally die.

Stuart piped up again, "Wait, you mean fairies are also immortal?"

"I guess so?  That's the impression I got.  I mean, I didn't really ask
anyone.  They definitely live for a long time, I thought some of them
talked about events from thousands of years ago as if they'd seen them.
As we were walking, we eventually ended up in a sort of village of
little huts, arranged around a bit clearing in the center of the
village.  A bunch of Daoine came out and greeted us, and Mab was the
center of attention.  They all knew her, and I thought we were maybe in
a village of people who were rebels.  That was actually the case, but I
didn't know it at first.

"Then there was another goddamn feast, and I was super hungry again.
It was so tempting to eat, and I must have sat there looking miserable.
Mab saw, and realized what was going on, and she asked if she could
help in some way.  I told her about the dream-woman, who'd helped me
the previous night, and that seemed to give her an idea.  She gave me a
little rock.  Oh.  Huh, it was maybe even the same rock that the
dream-woman gave me?"  She looked up at Jenn and Stuart, and explained
about the brown stone with the quartz band she'd been given in a dream.
"She told me to concentrate on it, and I'd stop being so hungry.  I
did, and it worked."

"Do you still have it?" asked Jenn.

"The rock?  Well, I should still have the one the dream-woman gave me,
assuming it didn't somehow magically get transported to Tir na Tuatha
with me.  I didn't check.  I don't have the one Mab gave me, I left
that one there.  That one, in Tir na Tuatha, looked the same, but might
have been a different one.  Or maybe there's someone making magic rocks
that look like that.  I don't know.

"Anyway, so I sat through another feast wishing I could eat, holding
this rock in my hand, and concentrating on it.  I think they were
celebrating Mab, although it wasn't obvious why exactly they were
feasting.  It was all going pretty well until these big mean dudes
showed up with swords, and broke everything up."

Stuart asked, "Iron or steel swords?  How did they hold them?"

"No, they looked like gold swords.  I mean, I don't remember it too
well, it was all so chaotic.  Maybe they were iron, but I don't think
so."

"Oh, bronze!"

"How can you tell?"

"Well," said Stuart, sitting up a bit straighter as he got to exercise
his knowledge, "the Bronze Age preceded the Iron Age, and one of the
theories about why fairies, that is, the displaced peoples from the
Iron Age invaders, why they were harmed by iron is just that: the Iron
Age peoples invading defeated them with better technology.  I didn't
think it would be quite so literal in reality.  Well," he said, a bit
sheepishly, "I didn't think I would be using the word reality in any
discussion of this type."

"I know, the whole thing is really surreal," said Aurelia.  "But
anyway, these soldiers came in and broke up the feast, and Mab grabbed
me, and dragged me to a hiding place under a bunch of straw.  We stayed
hidden until one of the soldiers kicked over the pile.  He shouted,
trying to get his friends to help him, and we ran like fuck.  I never
would have guessed it, but that little old lady ran like a sprinter.
She booked it out of there, and actually had to slow down to wait for
me to catch up.  We ended up running for like 10 minutes, and when we
finally stopped, she was laughing as much as she was breathing hard
from running.  I asked her what she was laughing about, and she said
something about the soldiers not knowing what they were doing.

"But so now we were out in the woods again.  I figured it was going to
be another cold night, but Mab asked me to help her.  We stood, facing
each other and holding hands.  She told me some words to say, which
were just sounds, I didn't get any meaning out of them.  We chanted
these words back and forth to each other, and this glow surrounded us.
It sort of cascaded up in a spiral, it was this amazing green color,
like the best special effects you've ever seen, times a million.  It
spread out, and this hut, exactly like her hut, just sprang up out of
the ground.  I could kind of tell that it was coming from somewhere
else, like I could see it coming before it arrived somehow.  I don't
have any idea how to describe it.

"When the whole thing faded away, the hut was still there, and she went
into the hut.  It was still way too small for me, but I followed her,
and stayed crouched down.  It was her hut.  All her stuff was there.
There was even a fire burning in the middle of the floor.  I was
amazed, like jaw on the ground, huge eyes amazed.  I asked her how she
did that, but she just smiled and said you learn some tricks in life.
I asked if I did that, or she did, and she said we both did, that it
was easier with two people than just one."

"Were you still seeing emotion colors there?" asked Stuart.  He'd grown
accustomed to hearing Aurelia describe the emotion colors she was
seeing from other people, and realized it was missing from the story.

"You know, I wasn't.  Interesting.  Either no one was experiencing
emotions, or I wasn't seeing them.  I didn't think about it at the
time.  But so we had a good night, since we had her hut and her fire,
and I just rolled myself up in my cloak and went to sleep.  It was a
lot better than the previous night, trying to use a bunch of grass and
leaves as a blanket.

"I did have a vision in the night, though, sort of half way between a
dream and a full-body vision.  In it, I saw Mab fighting with those
soldiers, and I didn't see anything that obviously showed it, but I
thought she was losing.

"When I woke up, I was starving.  I'd dropped the rock with the quartz
in it back at the village when the soldiers showed up, so I asked Mab
what I should do.  She thought about it for a moment, then gave me a
more normal rock, and said I should concentrate on that.  That it would
be more of a challenge, but she thought I could do it, after calling up
the hut the previous night.  So I did, I sat down and concentrated on
the rock -- it was actually one of the rocks that we found in my bag
after I got back -- and I thought it was working, but I wasn't as sure
as the last time.  I don't know if it was just a distraction or what,
but I didn't feel as bad.

"I told her about the vision I'd had, and she pondered on it for a few
minutes.  She asked me a couple questions about it, most of which I
couldn't answer.  She said she'd be careful, and that as we walked,
she'd keep me updated on where the gate area was.  She also taught me
how to get through.

"It turns out that getting through a gate is like 95% in your head.
The other five percent is this weird little dance," Aurelia stood and
hopped around a few times, arms moving apparently at random, ending
with her left foot out in front of her, revolving the foot around.
"The rest of it is, I guess, a kind of magic spell that happens in
your head.  Most of the words she used don't exist in English, all to
do with how to think about things, and traveling, and passages, and a
kind of self-distraction.  She said you don't even really need to do
the dance, but it helps if you've never done it before.

"She had me practice it a few times.  She sat there with her eyes
closed, and I actually felt her mind interact with mine somehow.  I
would try it, and she gave me advice on what to change.  I got it right
after a few tries, so she said.  I mean, obviously I did, I'm here.
But it wasn't that simple.

"We started walking again.  I asked if we should put her hut back where
it was supposed to go, and she sort of laughed, and said it was
perfectly fine wherever it was.  I guess she moves it around from time
to time.  I didn't ask her this, but I had the impression that she'd
been living around the Tir na Tuatha for a loooong time.

"As we walked, she pointed out where we were going.  There was a set of
hills we were aiming for, and she said the gate was at the top of the
right-hand one.  It was the Aonach Buidhe Mhor, and I could ask people
using that name if we got separated.  Apparently it used to be a fort,
thousands of years ago, and it was magically charged somehow."

"Was it the same place you were brought into Teer na Tooha?" asked
Stuart, mangling the name a bit.  "You came back to Seattle in exactly
the same place you left."

"No, it was definitely a different place."

"How did you come back to the same place here, then?"

"I dunno, how did I spend four days there and two minutes here?  None
of it makes any sense.  So we walked on.  Mab got kind of chatty,
telling me about all the plants and animals we were walking past.  We
saw deer and rabbits and foxes, but we also saw a dragon, flying
through the sky, far away.  We passed a bunch of different trees and
bushes and stuff, and she described a lot of the herbs we passed and
what they did.  Some of them were definitely magical, if she was right.
She told me about the hills we could see.  Almost everything seemed to
have a story or something associated with it.  If I hadn't been
starving and tired and sore from walking and sleeping on the ground, I
probably would have been more interested.

"The sun had just set when we saw a bunch of those soldiers walking
along.  She motioned me back, and we hid behind a tree, sort of peeping
out at them.  They were a long ways off, and we were pretty well
hidden, so I got to look at them for a while."

"Could you describe them?" said Stuart, somewhat more eagerly than he'd
intended.

"Yeah, I guess.  They were these big hairy guys, all covered in blue
tattoos or paint or something.  They were wearing these sort of thin
wool blanket things, like a hugely overgrown kilt, with no shirt or
anything else.  Some of them had animal skulls on their heads like
helmets.  They had those sort of gold colored swords, some of them did.
Some others had more like those axes on long poles.  Some of them
didn't carry anything obvious.  One of them carried a thing that turned
out to be a bagpipe, which surprised me, but Mab said it was normal."

Stuart nodded, staring at Aurelia with rapt attention.

"And they were walking along, sort of crosswise to our path, was what I
thought, but Mab said they were going to the same place as us.  She
said they were sent by the Queen, probably to look for me.  I asked why
I was so important, and she said there was a prophecy about a
fairy-born Seer that I needn't concern myself with too much.  I wanted
to ask more about that, but she seemed preoccupied, and it wasn't the
time.  She had me find a stick that was short, and would be hideable if
I needed to, then she pulled out this sort of sharpened stone, and
shaved the stick down into a point.  That's the one that was in my bag,"
she said to Stuart, who had been about to ask the question.  "She said
it was a final line of defense, and to keep it in my hand if I thought
I was in any danger.  She had me practice this downward stabbing motion
with it," she demonstrated, gently, using a fork from the table.  Jenn
was wide-eyed at the thought.  Stuart was fascinated.

"We waited for them to pass on, and then we started following them from
way back.  That didn't last long.  One of them spotted us somehow, and
they turned around and headed back toward us.  I have no idea how they
saw us.  We hid, and Mab gave me a bunch of stones I could throw as a
distraction.  I tried to tell her I suck at throwing things, but she
just shushed me, and sat there with her eyes closed; I thought she was
doing some kind of magic, and maybe she was.  The soldiers came up to
where we were and I thought they were going to pass by.  But one of them
saw us in our hiding spot.  He went to grab me out, but he tripped on
something, and fell really hard.  That was enough, though, and they all
gathered around, surrounding us.  There was a lot of shouting, and Mab
stood up, and glared around the group.  Everone took a step back, I
don't think they expected her.  Then she raised her arms like she was
about to cast a huge spell, and they really took a step back.

"What happened next is totally confused in my head.  It was this huge
chaos.  From out of nowhere were these dogs, but big scary dogs.  Like,
black demon dogs almost, they didn't look like normal dogs.  Then there
was, I swear I am not making this up, a dragon.  It wasn't huge or
anything, but it was definitely a giant lizard with wings, and it was
angry.  Mab moved like she was in a dream.  I was terrified she was
going to get killed, these guys all got their weapons out, and were
fighting with the dogs and the dragon, and I almost thought they were
fighting with each other.  Somehow, at some point, she told me to run.

"So, I ran.  I ran like hell, aiming for Aonach Buidhe Mhor.  To get
there, I had to go into this valley that was all boulders and rocks.
It was scary, because I was just wearing this long thin dress and these
leather slippers.  I couldn't run without hurting my feet, and since it
looked like my choice was hurt my feet or die, I ran.  One or two of
the soldiers ran after me, but I had a head start, and they weren't
very fast runners, or they weren't desperate to catch me, so I was able
to keep ahead of them.  They didn't have shoes at all.  By the time I
was part way through the valley, there was only one of them following
me.  There were these thorn bushes too, and I could mostly avoid them,
but there were one or two parts where I had to go through some of them.
They scratched me up pretty good.  They weren't like the blackberries
we have here, they were these tall single-stalk plants with purple
flowers that I probably would have thought were pretty if I wasn't
trying to go through them.

"I was moving pretty fast, and I ended up just ignoring all the little
scratches and stuff.  In another few minutes, I was climbing the hill,
which was very distinct, sort of isolated from other hills nearby.  I
thought the guy following me had given up, so I slowed down a little
bit.  I was out of sight of the fight, so I had no idea what had
happened to Mab.  I didn't know if the dragon and dogs were on her
side, or their side, or had just shown up at random.  I assume she
called them, so I hope she got out of that ok.

"As I got to the top of the hill, I saw the ruins of the castle.  I was
out of breath from running and moving so fast, and I was bleeding from
all these little cuts.  I sat down for a minute, and was starting to
calm down when I heard something.  I turned around, and there was that
guy, coming up the hill.  My heart turned up to 11, and I looked around
for the gate.  I didn't know what I was looking for.  When I came in,
there wasn't anything obvious, like an actual gate.

"I thought about what Mab had told me, the advice she'd given me on
getting through the gate.  She'd told me how to do it, but never
mentioned *where* I should do it.  I think she thought she'd be able to
show me the spot.  I thought about what she'd told me, the stones she'd
given me, the little stick, all of that.  I don't know why I did it,
but I pulled out a handful of stones, and started throwing them at the
guy.  Mostly I missed, but one of them hit him, and he dropped.  I had
no idea if he was just hiding, or if I'd actually hurt him.  I hoped
I'd hurt him, he was awful.

"I looked around more, but there was no obvious place.  I just found
what I thought was the center of the fort area, and tried doing the
dance.  I must have gotten it wrong, but I wasn't sure.  I tried it
again.  It still didn't work.  I started to panic.  The guy got up --
if I hurt him, it couldn't have been that bad.  He was bleeding on his
head, though.  He didn't look too steady, but he still started coming
for me, which freaked me the fuck out.  I had to stop, and steady
myself.  He wasn't moving that fast.  He said something to me, but I
didn't really understand it.  He held his hands out like he was trying
to calm me down, but his words had sounded angry.  I took a deep
breath, let it out, and tried again.  I think he figured out what I was
doing, and he starting coming at me faster.

"This time, finally, it worked.  The world distorted and turned weird.
All the colors shifted and turned inside out, and then I was standing
in front of Stuart."

Aurelia looked at her two friends.  They looked back, struck
momentarily dumb.  Jenn was the first to speak.  "Holy shit," she said.

Chapter

The three of them walked back from the Six Arms.  Aurelia had
reluctantly agreed to let Jenn pay for dinner, since she no longer had
ID, debit card, credit cards, cash, or anything else that was in her
wallet.  "But I owe you," she said, as they left the restaurant and
turned up the hill.

"Don't be silly, Aurey.  You just got back from a four-day trip to hell
in a magical land where you weren't allowed to eat.  I can cover
dinner."  She smiled, and gathered her friend in a tight embrace.  "I
can't believe all that shit happened to you.  It's so weird," she said,
talking into Aurelia's shoulder.

"I know.  It's weird to tell the story.  It's so inadequate, you know?
So much more happened, and it was so powerful and strange and moving.
Like, I could talk about Mab and her hut for hours.  I could talk about
that castle, oh my god, all the stuff in that castle!  I spent a whole
day wandering around.  And the Daoine I saw there.  I don't even know
where to start.  I wish you'd been there, Stuart," she said, turning to
Stuart as they walked.  "You would have known so much more than me."

"I don't know about that," he said, a bit bashfully.  "I mean, I might
have known a bit more, but it sounds like fairytales and real fairies
(I still can't believe I'm saying that) are pretty different.  It makes
sense -- the fairytales are from ancestral memory, of course they're
not going to get the details right.  So all my studying just means I
know a bunch of lies that don't matter in the real Tir na Tuatha."

"Well, anyway, it would have been good to have a friend there with me."

Stuart walked in silence for a minute.  He said, "You think of me as a
friend?"

"Of course!  You've been helping me this whole time, and I don't know
what I would be doing now without you.  Of course we're friends!"

"Cool," he said, quietly, almost to himself.  They continued along, and
reconvened in Jenn's apartment.

Chapter


In the days that followed, Aurelia was able to get herself to the bank
and to the Department of Licensing, and she started to get life back to
normal a bit.  A friend gave her an old phone, and after an intensely
frustrating half-day spent on hold with her carrier, she got it working.
It wasn't the shiny iPhone 4S she'd had before, but it worked, and it had
enough smarts to run the Facebook and Twitter apps she liked.

She discovered, upon re-establishing her phone service, a large number
of text messages and even a few voicemails.  Some were from concerned
friends, but one was from Daniel.

"Greetings, Aurelia," he said, his suave demeanor once again in place.
"This is your old compatriot Daniel Shaugnessey.  I'm back from my
voyage to the freezing lands of the east coast, where I've met with
some moderate success.  I was hoping you would be interested in another
gustatory outing -- perhaps we can find another cuisine to introduce
your taste buds to.  Let me know if you have any free time available in
your datebook for the next week or two.  Ciao!"

She saved that one, and pondered.  He'd disappeared on a trip to New
York and Boston a few days after their first and only date, leaving her
with nearly three weeks to consider what she thought of him.

She still had the impression that he was having a joke at her expense
on that first date.  But his attitude on the voicemail didn't have that
same biting edge.  She was starting to think he was just another guy,
who happened to use a lot of big words.  She also didn't feel the same
attraction to him that she had before the trip to Tir na Tuatha.  Not
that she'd met any romantic prospects there, but the experience had
changed how she looked at the world.  For one thing, she felt a greater
distrust of Daoine Sidhe, and he certainly appeared to be one.  But then,
she realized, so was she.

She set the phone down, and decided she'd have to think about that one
a bit before getting back to him.

Chapter

Aurelia stepped off the bus at the UW stop, and made her way to the
library, where she was to meet Stuart for their first library session
since her inadvertent trip to Tir na Tuatha.  She now habitually felt
for the reassuring weight of the iron knife wherever she'd stashed it:
pocket, bag, waistband.  She didn't leave the house without it, now
viewing it almost as a kind of talisman.  Certainly if she were pulled
into Tir na Tuatha again, she'd be happier to have it.

She walked through the lunchtime crowds on Red Square, surreptitiously
examining the occasional Daoine Sidhe she ran across, or trying to
gauge the emotion of someone who was showing visible emotion-stuff.

She was quite surprised to see, at one point, a giant troll walking
along, green skin and hair quite plain in the grey air of the Seattle
winter.  She actually took some pains to hide herself from him -- her
only association with the giant trolls was from her initial walk to
meet the Queen in Tir na Tuatha.  She wondered if he'd come to find her
somehow.  It seemed possible.  But he moved like he was just another
person walking along.  Aurelia was amazed no one else could see him.

She hurried to the library, and sat down a bit breathlessly in front of
Stuart, who was there with his laptop, working on something.

"I just saw a troll!" she said, keeping her voice down between her
desire not to disturb others, and not to be heard declaring what would
seem to be patent nonsense to anyone other than her or Stuart.

He looked up, and looked around.  "You did?  Where?"

She pointed through the wall.  "Out there, he was just walking along.
But I've never seen a troll here before."

"Here like UW, or here like the world of men?"

"Here like world of men here.  I only ever saw them in Tir na Tuatha."

"Huh," said Stuart, considering.  "What do you think it means?"

"I don't know.  I'm afraid the Queen has sent searchers out to find
me."

"Did anyone else see it?"

"I don't know," said Aurelia, looking back over her shoulder, in case
the troll had followed her into the library.  "I couldn't tell.  No one
was freaking out about it if they did.  Maybe it just looks like a
normal person to someone without second sight."

Stuart stood up, curiosity plain on his face.  "Let's go see if he's
still out there."  They walked briskly back out the door, and looked
around the quad.

"I don't see him," said Aurelia, stretching to look as far as she
could.  "I guess he moved on.  Still, I don't like it."

"No," said Stuart, as they walked back in.  "If the Queen is sending
fairies after you, that's probably a bad sign."

"Do you think she knows I've even left?"

"It sounds like she must be pretty powerful, from your descriptions.
Hey, did anyone mention the terms 'seelie' or 'unseelie' while you were
there?"  Stuart resumed his seat in front of his laptop.

"Maybe?  What do they mean in English?  I was hearing all the words
they were speaking in whatever that language was, but if it wasn't a
sensible word, like just a name or something, I just heard the sound,
without understanding any meaning from it.  I stopped paying much
attention to the sounds."

"Oh, I don't know.  I just ran across the terms.  There's the Seelie
Court, and the Unseelie Court, mentioned in some of the stories about
Scottish fairies.  They're kind of like the nice versus the evil
fairies.  Sort of.  The Seelie fairies are more friendly to humanity,
and the Unseelie fairies are the mischevious kind."

"Oh," said Aurelia, reflecting for a moment.  "I don't remember hearing
the words, but I'd guess the Queen represents the Unseelies, and Mab
was the Seelies, if those things are real.  Sorry, I guess I'm not a
very good witness of this kind of thing."

"You said you thought you were in a rebel village, when you and Mab
stopped at that feast.  Why did you think that?"

"Oh, the way people were talking.  There were a lot of toasts about
overthrowing the Queen, and I heard some conversations with Mab about
it.  She seemed to be someone they all wanted to consult for advice.
No one was trying to hide it."

"So, when the soldiers came in, do you think they were breaking up a
bunch of rebels, or were they coming for you?"

"Well, the way Mab acted, it could have been either.  I mean, I was the
only human in all of Tir na Tuatha, so I probably stuck out like a sore
thumb."

"Did the village fairies see you as being unusual?"

"Yeah, but they were way more excited by Mab.  It was like Madonna came
in the room with a dodo bird or something.  Yeah, it's cool she's got a
dodo bird, but Madonna just walked into the room.  You don't fuss over
the bird."

"Huh," said Stuart.  "That's not the analogy I would have used."

"Anyway, there's a much more important question we should be answering,
which is whether the Queen is sending fairies after me."

"Oh, right.  Sorry, I got diverted by the Seelie question.  How can we
tell if the Queen is sending people out to find you?"  Stuart sat back
in his chair, steepling his fingers and considering the question.

"I suppose we could wait until one of them snatches me back to Tir na
Tuatha."  Aurelia huffed a little bit in frustration, blowing her hair
out of her face.

"That sounds like a late point to find that kind of thing out."

"Yeah.  But I don't know.  I'm the only person on earth who can see
them.  Unless there's some kind of magical test we can do to spot
fairies with normal people.  Or give other people second sight."

"Could you still do the teleport dance?"

"What?"

"It was just a thought.  Maybe you could do the teleport dance, and get
back into Tir na Tuatha.  It wouldn't be hard to find the spot again,
I'll probably never forget it.  It's just like 500 yards that way," he
pointed.

Aurelia sat and stared at him for a moment, having clearly never
considered the possibility before.  "That's a great thought.  Scary as
hell, but great.  I kind of don't want to go back, but knowing how to
travel back and forth would make a big difference."  She sat back and
looked up at the ceiling.  "I could bring people with me, even.  Maybe.
But if a bunch of people went in with me, we'd be a lot safer, and
maybe we could bring tents and stuff, and be more prepared.  And bring
our own food.  Do you get stuck in the land of fairies if you eat food
you brought with you?"

"No.  Well, the stories say you don't.  I don't know if that's really
true or not.  For all I know, you could have eaten the food there and
been perfectly safe."

"Oh no, Mab knew exactly why I wasn't eating.  You were right about not
eating the food there."

"Oh, ok.  I must have missed that when you told the story.  God, this
whole thing is so frustratingly fascinating!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'm sitting on a course of study that could make my reputation
for the rest of my life.  The existence of a magical land next to our
own?  Fairies being real?  All that?  And the only proof I have is you,
and a story you told.  Not that I doubt you, but you could be a crazy
person for all anyone knows, and if I tell anyone, I'd probably be
a laughingstock.  I mean, I'm sure we could prove you're for real,
but..."

"No way, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a lab taking
weird tests and getting shocked or whatever."

"Oh, no... Oh, well, yes, ok.  I see what you mean.  There'd have to be
some of that."

"Yeah, that's right out.  I'm getting a job and a boyfriend and having
kids some day, I'm not going to be anyone's lab rat or anything."

"You know, you may not end up having a choice?"

"What do you mean?  Of course I'll have a choice.  If you think you're
going to sign me up for any of that, you're crazy, and totally wrong."
Aurelia actually started to get up before Stuart waved her down again,
and explained what he meant.

"No, that's not what I mean.  I mean that usually, when someone is
'chosen' in a story, their life is to some extent predetermined.  It
depends on the story, and obviously whatever's going on here has its
own rules, but when you get singled out for special powers, it's
because there's a destiny that needs fulfilling."

"Oh.  Well, shit.  I know what you mean, now that you say it.  Is there
any way to get out of it?"  Aurelia looked so unhappy that Stuart felt
a protective urge, and very nearly lied to her to try to cheer her up.

"It depends, I guess.  Maybe in this case there is."  If his study of
mythology and folklore to this point had suggested one thing, it was
that the person chosen in the story absolutely could not get out of it,
but even Stuart wasn't so pessimistic as to suggest that he knew what
real life and real fairies were really throwing at Aurelia.

"Ugh, I hope so."

Chapter

Aurelia knocked on Jenn's door.  They were finally getting together
again to make dinner and hang out for an evening.  Jenn answered, and
ushered Aurelia in with mock seriousness.  "Good evening, madame," she
said in a bad British accent, bowing deeply and flourishing her hand
elegantly.

"Oh, good evening to yourself, madame," said Aurelia in return, giving
a slight bow.  "I have brought the comestibles," she continued, holding
up the shopping bag with one hand.  She couldn't keep it up, and
cracked up laughing at the ridiculous accents.  Jenn kept a straight
face for a few seconds more, but then she was laughing as well.

They went together into the kitchen, and started preparing for the
night's feast: padh thai with shrimp, and cucumber salad.  "So, Jenn,"
said Aurelia, as she chopped vegetables.

"So, Aurelia," said Jenn, separating noodles preparatory to boiling
them.

"I have a sinister purpose in being here tonight."

"Oooh, sinister.  What sinister thing do you have in mind?"

"I need to talk to you about Daniel."

"Wait, is that still a thing?  I thought he took off for New York."

"He did.  He's back, though.  He wants to go out again."

"Do you not want to go out with him?  Sounded like it ended pretty well
the last time."  Jenn winked lasciviously at Aurelia over her bowl of
noodles.

"Shut up.  It went fine.  That's not the question.  The problem is,
he's part fairy.  He's Daoine Sidhe.  On the one hand, I really want to
know if *he* knows he's Daoine.  On the other hand, I'm worried he
might be working for the Queen, and plan to drag me back to Tir na
Tuatha.  If I go out with him, it would be pretty easy for him to drag
me to a gate, and back to the Queen."

"Tough question.  On the one hand, hot guy.  On the other hand, he
might be a spy, but not the sexy kind of spy like James Bond.  Well,
actually the sexy kind of... Never mind.  I see your dilemma.  Maybe
what you do is go on a date wtih him, but wear an iron chastity belt."

Aurelia gave her a weird look, and said, "I'm not worried about sex.
I'm worried about the part where he conks me on the head and drags me
back to his leader."

"Well, I don't mean literally an iron chastity belt.  I mean, maybe you
go *prepared*, whatever that means.  Like, you said iron hurts them, so
you have something iron.  That knife you showed me.  Maybe you can find
an iron ring, so if you grab an arm it hurts, or if you slap a fairy,
it really hurts them.  Maybe you get a gun that shoots iron bullets.  I
don't know."

"I'm not getting a gun," said Aurelia, suppressing a shudder.  "Those
things creep me out.  I like the ring idea, though.  I wonder where you
get an iron ring.  And I always carry that knife now, but I need to
make a better sheath for it.  The paper one is starting to get a bit
shredded."

"You know that guy Phillip I dated a few years ago?"

"Yeah, the one who was into all that weird SCA stuff?"

"Exactly.  Definitely not dating him again, but he knew all these SCA
crazies, and they did all kinds of stuff like that: he knew
blacksmiths, and leather workers, and all that.  Maybe you could talk
to one of them, about both the ring and the sheath.  Aren't knife
sheaths supposed to be made of leather?"

"I dunnno, I guess.  I've never had a knife that needed a sheath
before.  Just kitchen knives and stuff."

"Well, I'll call Phillip up again, and see if he has any ideas.  See,
I'm not totally useless."  Jenn grinned hugely at Aurelia, and reached
for the recipe sheet they were following.  "Where's the onion?"

"Here," said Aurelia, passing a plate piled with vegetables.  "And I
never said you were useless."

Jenn just stuck out her tongue in reply, and they continued making
dinner in the tiny kitchen.

Chapter


Jenn was able to get hold of Phillip, and arranged a time that he could
come over and hang out for a bit to talk about iron rings and knife
sheaths.  Aurelia put off calling Daniel back, figuring he'd said a
week or two, so he should be flexible.

Phillip arrived looking perfectly normal, but Aurelia knew better:
she'd seen him decked out in medieval garb that would have looked
perfectly at home in Tir na Tuatha.  They sat down, and Phillip waggled
his eyebrows at Jenn by way of greeting.  She bowed slightly from the
waist, and sat herself.  Aurelia contented herself with a simple,
"Hello."

"So," said Phillip, grinning through his well-kept beard.  "I hear
you're in the market for some medieval items?  An iron ring?"

"Yeah, Jenn said you might know blacksmiths and stuff.  I'd like to
find an iron ring.  And I need to figure out a better sheath for this,"
she held up the knife, with its triangular blade and folded-over
handle.

"Oooh," said Phillip, his eyes lighting up at the sight of the knife.
"May I?"  He held his hand out.

Aurelia put the knife in his outstretched hand without saying anything.
A faint corona of yellow and orange coruscated around him as he
examined it.  He pulled it out of the well-worn newspaper sheath, and
looked over the blade, testing it carefully against his thumb.

"This is a beautiful piece," he said, carefully putting it back in the
sheath and handing it back.  "Where did you find it?"  He turned a
curious gaze on Aurelia.  "That's as good as any workmanship I've seen
on a home-forged medieval knife design before."

"Oh, um.  I guess... It was a gift.  I don't know where it came from."
She felt this was sufficiently true without opening up difficult
questions like how you take a physical object with you from a dream.

"Fantastic.  Well, if you find out who made it, I'd love to get their
name.  They clearly do good work.  Making a simple sheath for that
would be no problem -- I could do it myself, or I know a couple of
different leathersmiths who could make something more elaborate
depending on what you want.  Are you interested in medieval
recreation?"

"No, not really.  I just need a way to keep the knife safely."  Aurelia
was having a hard time masking her distaste for Phillip, who seemed to
be turning an altogether too appraising eye on her.

"Well, then, my lady, I would be honored if you would let me make the
first attempt."

Aurelia paused, torn between a desire to get it out of the way, and not
wanting to encourage him.  "Ok, sure.  It just has to cover the blade
so it's safe to carry around."

He put his hand out, and Aurelia handed the knife back to him.  "Thank
you," he started to put the knife into his backpack, and Aurelia
stopped him.

"Wait!  What are you doing?"  Her agitiation at the sight of the knife
disappearing with someone else was plain.

"Oh," said Phillip, pausing.  He looked back to Jenn, who shrugged
imperceptibly, then at Aurelia again.  Confusion was evident on his
face.  "I was going to use it as a pattern for the sheath.  Is that not
ok?"

"No, sorry.  Um...  Is there any other way to do it?  I really don't
want to lose track of it.  It means a lot to me."

"Oh, well.  I could trace it out on paper, but of course the fit
wouldn't be as fine..."

"But it would still work?"

"Yes, it would still work.  Or, you could come with me, and be there as I
make the sheath.  That would be best."  There was that look again, and
Aurelia had a feeling his interest was in more than just having a good
pattern available.

"No, let's just trace it," said Aurelia after a moment's hesitation.
She didn't want to encourage him.  She had enough trouble dealing with
Daniel, and anyway, wasn't particularly attracted to Phillip.  "Do you
have any blank paper?" she asked Jenn.

Jenn jumped up and rooted around on a little table coming up with a
sheet of lined notebook paper after a few seconds.  "Will this do?"

Phillip took it as Jenn handed it to him, and said, "This should work
fine.  Do you have a pencil?"  She handed him a beat-up yellow wooden
pencil.  He took the knife from Aurelia, laid it out on the paper, and
traced around it quickly with the pencil.

"What will all this cost," asked Aurelia, concerned suddenly that she
was getting herself into something she couldn't afford.

"Oh, no, my lady.  I already have the leather, and I assure you, it's
no trouble to perform this service for you.  I don't need any payment."

This made Aurelia uncomfortable, like she might owe him a favor.  "No,
let me give you something for it.  At least I can cover the cost of the
leather, or something."

"No, I insist.  It will be no trouble, and the cost of the leather is
negligible, only a few cents.  I am, if you will, doing a favor for a
friend."  He glanced back at Jenn and crinkled his eyes in a smile at
her.  She smiled back, although probably not the whole-hearted smile he
might have been hoping for.

"Well... Ok.  Thank you."  Aurelia took the knife back off the table,
and slipped it into her bag.  "So, what about that ring?  Are you a
blacksmith, too?"  She tried to inject some levity into the words, and
only partially succeeded.

"Hah, no.  I dabble in many things, but you can't really dabble in
blacksmithery.  I can give you the names of some smiths around Seattle.
You might also check in with the Black Dog Forge, which is a
blacksmithing collaborative in Belltown.  They incline toward artistic
work, and this might be right up their alley."  He paused, and
scribbled a few names on the notebook paper, tearing it off and handing
the name section to Aurelia.  "You can find contact information online,
I don't have it right to hand for any of them.  I know most of those
fine folks through the SCA, and have never dealt with them outside of
tourneys."

"Well, thanks," said Aurelia, looking over the list.  "I'll check them
out."

Chapter

Aurelia looked up the names of the various blacksmiths online.  Two of
them had no online presence other than a contact page.  The other three
individuals had webistes of varying quality, showing of their work,
which seemed to be uniformly good, to the extent that Aurelia was any
judge of iron work.  The Black Dog page was fascinating, and she ended
up losing herself in a photo gallery for nearly half an hour.  She
decided to try Black Dog first.

The building itself was on 2nd Avenue, in the very heart of Belltown, a
district just north of downtown Seattle.  It was a funky space, with
black ironwork hanging on the walls and a scene Aurelia associated with
Mordor in the Lord of the Rings movies: a glowing furnace with a
well-muscled man hammering away at a red-hot piece of iron.  It was
surprisingly primal.

She had arranged to meet Blackjack, one of the artists, there.  She was
a little surprised to find that Blackjack was a woman, having blithely
assumed that all blacksmiths would be male.  She smiled and extended a
grubby black hand.  Aurelia shook it, and found her own hand blackened
by whatever was on Blackjack's.  Blackjack said, "Oh shit, sorry about
that.  Occupational hazard."  She showed Aurelia to a sink, where she
washed her hands with soap that smelled of oranges, but was gritty,
like it had sand in it.  Blackjack spoke as Aurelia washed.

"So, you said something about a ring on the phone?  That's not
something you'd normally make by forging, but I guess it could be
done."

"Oh, how would you normally do it?"

"Well, I'm not sure.  No one's ever asked before.  We mostly do...
bigger stuff here, I guess.  Like that," she pointed at an elaborate,
spiky chair that looked like it could double as a torture implement.

"Do you think you could make a ring, or am I really in the wrong
place?"

Blackjack smiled, and Aurelia was surprised to see her white teeth
against her deeply tanned skin.  Blackjack's black hair was cropped short,
like it was an overgrown buzz cut.  "It sounds like an interesting
challenge," she said.  "I've never tried anything like it before.
It would be pretty rough.  The blacksmith work we do isn't super fine
or anything.  I guess you could take it to a machinist to get turned
down into something prettier, but it would lose some of its charm,
if you ask me."

"What would it cost to give it a try?"

"Well, I'll give it a try for free.  We're used to working on a much
larger scale, and frankly, enough iron to make a ring is just throwaway
scrap around here.  I'll make a first attempt, you tell me what you
think.  If it looks like it's worth something to you, you pay what you
think it's worth.  How does that sound?"

"That's a far more generous offer than I expected."

"Maybe it's just the hormones talking -- it's not often we get such a
pretty face in here."  She smiled again.  Aurelia had not previously
been so clearly hit on by a woman before, and was flattered and a bit
flustered by it.

"Well, it's a good deal for me, certainly.  How long do you think it'll
take?"

"Dunno.  Probably four or five hours, all told.  You could watch, if
you want."

"Is it dangerous?"  Aurelia's hesitation must have been clear, because
Blackjack grinned mischeviously at her.

"Not for me," she said.

Chapter

Two days later, Blackjack called Aurelia and said she was done.
Aurelia had stayed to watch for about ten minutes before the clanging
of the hammers had started to give her a headache.  When she arrived
again, Blackjack was reclining in a dirty chair that sat in the corner
with a few others, a small table, and an ancient-looking fridge.  She
motioned for Aurelia to sit down, and offered her a beer.  Aurelia
accepted, and was handed a can of Coors.

"So, this is what I came up with," said Blackjack, handing Aurelia an
interesting-looking band of black iron.  It was smooth for most of its
circumference, almost the same cross-section as the gold ring the fairy
had given her so long ago.  Over about 1/5th of its circumference,
there were ornate miniature spikes, not sharp, but very spiky looking,
which put Aurelia in mind of a crown.

"Wow," she said, turning it over in her hands.  She slipped it on her
right ring finger, found it a bit too big, and tried it on her middle
finger, where it sat almost perfectly.  It was just the tiniest bit
too big.  "That's fantastic!  I wasn't expecting anything more than an
iron version of this," she said, holding up her left hand.  "I love all
the little details on the spikes!"

"It's a little bit more punk-rock than you probably wanted, but I had
to put my own touches on it.  It was really interesting welding those
on there, I've never done work so small in a forge before.  I might do
this some more, I could see a market for this kind of thing.  Does it
fit, or is it a bit too loose?"

"It's a touch loose, but I don't think it's going to fall off or
anything."  She tried tugging it off her finger, and found that it
slipped off with a little bit of effort.  "Oh," she said, moving it
over the knuckle, "I guess it is a bit too big.  This might come off if
my hands got cold, which is pretty much a given.  How hard would it be
to make it a little smaller?"

"Huh.  Probably not too hard.  Let me see it."  Blackjack took the ring
over to a workbench, and worked on it with a hammer for a few minutes.
She brought it back and handed it to Aurelia.  "Try it now," she said.

Aurelia slipped the ring on her finger, and it was the perfect size: it
slipped over the knuckle with a bit of effort, and didn't come off
without some twisting and exertion.  "Perfect!" she said, smiling up at
Blackjack.  "This is awesome, thank you so much!"

"No problem, I'm glad you like it."

"Would you take fifty bucks for it?"

"Ah," said Blackjack, suddenly looking a little sheepish.  "Without
going into the math of it, I think I'd rather just give it to you.
I think I'm going to make money on forged rings, so consider that your
finder's fee for giving me the idea.  Does that work for you?"

"Yeah," said Aurelia, trying not to look visibly relieved.  "I'm
unemployed right now, so $50 was as high as I could go, and even that
was a stretch.  This is amazing.  Thank you so much!"  She got up, and
pulled Blackjack out of her chair and into a warm embrace.  Blackjack
hugged her back, hesitantly at first, but then enthusiastically.

"I'm gonna call this the Aurelia model, do you mind if I do that?"

"No, that's really cool.  I've never had anything named for me before."

"That, my dear, is a damn shame."

Chapter


"Woah," said Jen, looking over the spiky iron ring on Aurelia's finger.
"When I said ring, I wasn't thinking like murder weapon."  She smiled
up at Aurelia, clearly impressed.

"It's not a murder weapon.  They're not sharp, they just look sharp."
She held out her hand again to admire the ring.  "It's not exactly my
normal style, but there's something cool about it.  Blackjack, the
blacksmith who made this, said she was going to call it the Aurelia
model.  It's pretty cool to have something named for me."

"Did she know you were going to be using it to knock out fairies?"

"Don't be ridiculous.  If I go around telling people that, they're
going to lock me up.  I just told her I wanted an iron ring.  It was
her idea to add the spikes.  I like it, though."  Aurelia got an oddly
aggressive look on her face, and punched the air, with the ring leading
the charge.  It looked quite painful to whoever received such a punch,
fairy or not.

"Ok, now that that's established, are you going to go out with Daniel
again or not?  I'm dying to know!"  Jenn dragged Aurelia to the couch,
where they both flopped down.

"Um.  Probably.  I don't think, now that I've thought about it, that he
knows he's Daoine Sidhe.  I think he thinks he's just a normal human.
I did, after all, and I'm apparently part Daoine."

"Yeah, but you don't have funny ears or goat legs or anything.  Right?
You don't, do you?"

"I don't think so," said Aurelia, self-consciously checking her ears
with her hands.  "I basically can't look in mirrors any more without
seeing weird scenes.  I ended up taping a Stranger page over my
bathroom mirror, just so I wouldn't see things every time I went in
there.  It makes doing my hair and make up nearly impossible."

"I wasn't going to say anything," said Jenn with an impish grin.

Aurelia slapped her on the shoulder.  "Shut up.  I can at least do
mascara and lipstick alright, and I check with my camera phone.  It'll
be interesting for that date with Daniel."  She considered for a
moment.  "Maybe the second sight will leave me alone for half an hour."

"So you are going out with him again," said Jenn, triumphantly.  "I
knew it.  I can read you like a book." 

"Pff.  You were desperate to know, a minute ago."

"I just wanted to hear you say it.  I knew it all along."

"Whatever.  Yes.  Fine.  I guess I'm curious to know whether he knows.
I need to figure this one out.  I don't know if I told you, but I
spotted a troll, a big green guy, a few days ago, and I've never seen
one here before.  I suspect the Queen of the fairies is sending fairies
after me.  I'm worried that all the non-humans I see wandering around
could potentially be under her control.  If that's the case, I'm in
pretty much constant danger of being dragged back to Tir na Tuatha,
since I run across five to ten Daoine a day."

"I don't think you're in danger.  Wouldn't they have grabbed you by now
if they were under her control?"

"I have no idea.  That's part of what I have to figure out."

"Why do you think Daniel will tell you, if he does know?  Wouldn't he
want to hide it, if he's part of some plot to drag you back to
fairy-land, or take over the human race, or whatever?"

"Oh, huh.  Yeah.  I hadn't thought about that.  I suppose this could be
harder than I was thinking."

"Just get him drunk.  Guys tell me all sorts of weird shit when they're
drunk.  You must have had that experience too."

"What?  No.  I'm not getting him drunk.  If we have a drink or two,
that's fine."

"Threaten him with your ring.  If he knows he's a fairy, he must know
iron will hurt him.  Hey, wait a minute.  How can you handle touching
iron, if you're part fairy?"

"That's been bugging me, actually.  I wonder if being part human gives
me immunity or something.  I have no idea what amount fairy I am -- I
might be just a tiny drop, or I might be half fairy.  My dad did
disappear before I was even born, maybe he was one hundred percent
fairy.  That would make as much sense as anything else, now that I
think about it.  I'm pretty sure my mom isn't a fairy."

"What if she is?  What if your mom is a fairy?  You said you saw her in
that dream with all the women going back in time, right?  And what if
the next woman was your grandmother?  Maybe that was all your
ancestors, back to some fairy great-great-great-grandmother?"

Aurelia sat, stunned, staring at Jenn.  She tried to speak several
times, and finally managed, "Holy shit, Jenn.  I don't know about the
fairy part, but I think you're right.  I think that dream-woman is some
ancestor of mine.  Mab said I was chosen at birth, and that I had to be
fairy-born...  Oh man."  She put her hand up to her head.  "That...
suddenly a bunch of things make sense.  The dream-woman was there in
Tir na Tuatha.  She did something to make me less hungry that first
night, then disappeared.  She must have used some kind of magic for
finding relatives or something.  That would explain why she has been
helping me out."  She looked at Jenn and made a bursting gesture from
her forehead, along with an explosion sound effect: mind blown.

Chapter

Four days later, on a blessedly rain-free Friday evening, Aurelia met
with Daniel at their planned destination: a Moroccan restaurant in
Belltown called Marrakesh.  They were to get dinner, then attend a late
show at the Jewelbox theater, a miniscule theater set in the middle of
a divey restaurant several blocks from Marrakesh.

Make up had indeed proven to be a special challenge, and the mirror had
not cooperated.  Aurelia had pulled back the newspaper page, and
discovered that she was looking into the face of the Queen of the
fairies.  She's uttered a yelp, and hastily put the paper back up; she
very nearly smashed the mirror, her hand stayed only by thoughts of
damage deposits she couldn't afford to lose.  She didn't know if the
Queen could see her or not, but was unwilling to explore the question.

She'd ended up going for a very simple coiffure and make up, and
confirmed her look with repeated cellphone snapshots.  It was a slow
and tedious process, particularly now that she no longer had the iPhone's
front-facing camera.

However, she'd budgeted time for it, and still arrived to the
restaurant on time.

It turned out to be much more involved than she'd expected.  They were
seated on cushions in front of a very low table.  A bowl was brought
out with hot water and towels for them to wash their fingers; it was
scented with lemons.  Dinner was served in numerous small courses.

"So, my enigmatic beauty," started Daniel, once they'd been seated and
the server had left them alone.  "I am pleased to find myself once
again in your presence.  Doubtless your life has presented you with
numerous vexations and pleasures in the weeks of my absence."

"You have no idea," she said.  "Life has been completely crazy.  I'd
like to tell you all about it at some point, but now's probably not
the time."

"Goodness, that does sound intriguing!  I do hope to hear the tale at
some point.  I can relate some of my own adventures in the frigid
environs of New York, if you think that would be a compelling topic,"
he inclined his head to look at her more closely in the dim light of
the fabric-draped restaurant.  His green eyes seemed to glow.

"Sure, what happened in New York?  I gather that it was cold?"

"Oh, my sweet, you have no conception!  It was positively Arctic.  I
would swear that over a foot of snow fell the first night I was there,
and I believe the temperature never once elevated above the freezing
point.  I was woefully unprepared, and started the trip by spending far
too much money at a number of boutique shops I have patronized in the
past.  On the positive side, I now have an array of sweaters, scarfs
and gloves which is without compare."

"Why were you there, again?  You told me on the phone, but I didn't
really understand."  Aurelia took a sip of the hot tea which had been
delivered to the table.  It was aromatic and floral.

"It was largely an exploratory mission.  My good friend Paul lives
there, and he claims he is well-attuned to the art scene.  He assured
me my humble artworks would be well received at a variety of galleries
he knew, and we were to explore options for putting together a showing.
After the miserable success I've experienced here in the sopping wet
gem of the Northwest, I was desirous of an audience who actually
understands what they're looking at, rather than gawping like yokels
and pointing in a slack-jawed manner.

"Suffice to say that Paul, though a dear man, may have somewhat
overestimated his social affluence.  We were granted an audience with a
small handful of gallery owners or managers, but their appreciation for
my work seemed to be similar to what I've received here; which is to
say, inadequate.  However, in the second week of my visit, I was able
to convince the owner of a small gallery in Manhattan to put up a show
in three months.  Paul has graciously offered to curate the hanging,
but I belive I will be flying out again to deliver and prepare the
show.  I love him dearly, of course, but I don't believe he can be
trusted to hang in a way which would satisfy my rather particular
tastes."

"So, you found a place to hang your work, at least.  That seems like a
good result."

"Oh yes, undoubtedly, it is a fine result.  The gallery is small and
relatively unknown, but at least it is located in Manhattan, and I may
be assured that those few viewers who do come through will be of a
higher general quality.  I've never felt that I needed to capture a New
York audience to truly succeed, but I also feel that, truly, it cannot
hurt."  He smiled wryly, delicately sipping his tea.

"What do you charge?  I saw some of your pictures on your website, but
there were no prices listed."

"Oh, that is the eternal question, of course.  One must not price the
work too high, or it will never sell.  One must not price the work too
low, or it will be scorned as having insufficient intrinsic value.  The
difficulty comes in judging the acceptable price in the marketplace,
and naturally the New York market is different than the Seattle market.
Tastes are more sophisticated, but prices are not automatically higher,
as the market is also saturated with excellent art by excellent
artists.  In answer to your more direct question, though, I honestly
have no clue."  He chuckled at this, pleased with his own humor.  "I
imagine I will be doing my research before I firmly set prices."  He
held up his teacup to Aurelia.  "Do you like the tea?  Green mint tea, I
believe."

"Yeah, it's nice.  I've never had anything like it."

"Indeed, Moroccan cuisine is unique in a number of respects.  I quite
enjoy dining here, but it is certainly a meal to be shared.  I can't
imagine a nicer companion with whom to share it.  I'm pleased you
contacted me again."  He held up his tea cup, and they clinked cups
together, sipping their tea with a genteel manner.

"You're a curious person, Daniel.  There's certainly never a boring
moment."

"I should hope not," said Daniel, looking a trifle alarmed.  "If you
find yourself becoming bored, I trust you will alert me post-haste.
I endeavor to make a point of being an engaging conversationalist.  Ah,
good, here is the first course."  They fell silent as the food was laid
out in front of them.

They ate in silence for a minute, Aurelia navigating her way around
flavors and textures she'd never experienced before.  She remained
silent, unsure what to say.  She knew what she wanted to say, which was
short-circuiting the other conversation she might otherwise have on
tap.  She wanted to tell Daniel about the second sight, and how he was
at least part Daoine Sidhe.  Anything else became hard to even think
about, much less express.

Fortunately, Daniel was ready to fill in any conversational gaps.

"You know, Aurelia," he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin after a
bite, "New York really is the most fascinating place.  All social
strata mix there, and one may find anyone from a peniless hobo all the
way to a millionaire Wall Street banker sharing the same subway car.
All races mix there as well.  We are sadly isolated in Seattle.  The
concept of cultural diversity here seems to mean that we are accepting
of both Swedes *and* Finns.  It's amazing we haven't had
racially-motivated riots, I've often thought.  One might draw a line
from east to west along Yesler Avenue, and find primarily black faces
south of the line, and white faces north of the line.  Not strictly
true, of course, but it's far more true than the more-liberal-than-
thou population would like to believe.  I am reminded of these things
any time I travel back to New York.  It really is interesting what an
effective melting pot the city is."

"Huh," said Aurelia, after swallowing a mouthful.  "I hadn't really
thought about it.  I grew up all over the place, and I guess I got used
to everything being different everywhere I went.  Seattle is just
another kind of different."

"Eloquently phrased.  Seattle is indeed another kind of different, but
one which I find sadly lacking much of the time.  I am fortunate that I
can do my paying work from anywhere in the world, so it matters not if
I'm in Seattle or New York or Kathmandu."

"Why do you stay in Seattle, then?"


"That is a fine question," he said, considering his answer for a
moment.  "I suppose there are a multitude of reasons, as is nearly
always the case.  I enjoy my social circle here.  The climate is vastly
preferrable over that in New York or Boston or Chicago, or even LA, all
of which might be suitable alternate living situations.  I am fond of
the city in ways which I cannot adequately explain even to myself.
Even the innate quaintness of attitude which proliferates here is in
its own way charming.  All of which, I suppose, could be summed up by
saying 'because'."  He smiled to himself, and took another bite.  "Why
do you stay here?" he asked, turning his bright green eyes on Aurelia.

She was unprepared for the question, and frowned to herself, trying to
frame an adequate response.  Finally, she said, "You know, I suppose
I've never really thought about it.  It's just like anywhere else, like
I said, I grew up all over the place.  I landed at UW, and it just felt
about right.  I've never seen a reason to move on.  Maybe I just want
to be in one place for a while.  My mom had us moving every few years,
something always ended up going wrong wherever we stayed, and her
solution was to move away."

"That sounds most unpleasant.  What an unfortunate way to grow up."
Daniel shook his head disapprovingly.

Aurelia suppressed a momentary flare of annoyance.  "I didn't have a
lot of choice in the matter.  I suppose my mom was just doing what she
thought was best with the situations she had.  I suppose you had a
perfect childhood?"  She realized she was speaking with more heat than
she'd intended, but didn't see a way to retract the words now that
they'd been said.

Daniel gazed at her, apparently trying to judge the level of her
annoyance, or whether it was at him.  "I apologize, I spoke in haste,"
he said.  "I didn't mean to denigrate your childhood or your mother's
actions.  My childhood was not perfect, but it sounds like it may have
been quite... well, different, I guess, to your own.  I grew up with
two parents, which seems to be a rare condition in these times.  We
moved twice as I grew up, but nothing like every few years.  I was a
nerd and a weakling at school, so I was the target of bullies, as you
may expect.  I imagine it's different for girls than it is for boys.  I
didn't really come into my own until after high school, midway through
college.  I realized at some point that I needn't conform to anyone
else's conception of who I needed to be, and have been pursuing my own
path since that time."

Aurelia looked at him, taking in the delicately elongated ears, the
nearly glowing green eyes, and all the more-human features.  She asked,
"How old are you?"  Once again, she realized she'd put more meaning and
spin on the question than she'd meant to.

"Twenty-eight," he said, answering the question without any hesitation.
"Why do you ask?"

"I couldn't tell.  I was trying to decide if you were the same age as
me, or a lot older, and realized I had no idea.  Sorry," she said,
breaking the spell of intensity she seemed to have woven herself into,
"that was probably a rude question."

"Not at all.  I believe the socially unacceptable question is to ask
the female of the species their age.  Men are generally not as troubled
with matters of age as their more vain counterparts."

"Not all women are vain," said Aurelia, again feeling her hackles rise
at the implied criticism.

"Of course not," said Daniel smoothly.  "And I would never intend to
imply that they are.  However, it is true that asking a woman her age
is generally considered impolite, where it's not as clearly impolite to
ask a man his age.  I wasn't passing judgement, just making an
observation."

Aurelia sat silent for a moment.  She was feeling the tension of not
talking about second sight and fairies building up, and trying to
decide if she should just give in, and let the dice fall as they may.
"I'm sorry," she finally said.  "I'm in an odd mood, I guess.  I
shouldn't be getting my back up like this, we're just having a casual
dinner conversation.  My life has been kind of weird lately, and maybe
that's stressing me out more than I think it should."

"Yes, you mentioned that before.  In what way has your life been
troubling you?  I'm most curious, but you suggested that it would be
better to wait for a more opportune time."

"Well," said Aurelia, the tension finally breaking, "most likely you
won't believe this, but I'm clearly going to be snappish and weird
until I get it out, so let's just get it out."  Daniel's face
registered a bit more than polite interest, and Aurelia was interested
to see that he was showing a faint corona of blue and purple emotion
stuff.  He hadn't previously shown any emotion she'd been aware of.

"I'll try to make this short and sweet, so you can dismiss me as crazy
without too much wind-up.  I was given second sight by a fairy a couple
months ago."  She paused and looked at him, waiting for him to laugh or
otherwise dismiss her.  He sat, still looking interested, and made a
go-on motion when it became evident she was waiting for a reaction.
"He gave me this ring, and since then, I've seen things like visible
emotions as colors, and non-humans walking around, and visions, and
other weird stuff.  You, for instance, are not human."  She paused, her
heart thudding in her chest, but his only response was to widen his
eyes a little, and his emotion stuff shifted further toward purple.
"And it turns out, neither am I.  I was grabbed by a fairy last week,
and dragged into the land of fairies, which is called Tir na Tuatha,
and had a four-day adventure there, which apparently lasted two minutes
here.  Since then, I've been increasingly worried that the Queen of the
fairies is trying to get to me again.  I came on this date at least in
part because I am desperate to know if you know that you're not
entirely human."

Their next course arrived at this moment, and Aurelia hurriedly shut
her mouth, quite sure she didn't want to deal with any questions from
their server, who thankfully left without acknowledging anything out of
the ordinary.

Daniel sat silently, looking alternately at Aurelia, the food, his
fingers, and back to Aurelia.  Finally, he said, slowly, "That is
indeed quite a story.  There must be much you're not telling me, which
is only fair.  I am not entirely human, you say?  I don't know quite
how to react to that news.  Let us focus, perhaps, on the more
tangible.  What leads you to believe I'm not human?"  His tone was even
and oddly unemotional.

"Um," said Aurelia, reaching across the small table to touch the
elongation of his ear, running her finger from his earlobe to the point
of his ear, some two inches higher than it should have been.  "That's
one hint.  The other is your eyes.  What color do you think your eyes
are?"

"Well, they're a sort of greenish or greyish, depending on the light.
Their color is highly dependent upon circumstance, I've been told."

"Wrong, they're the brightest green I've ever seen.  Like, nearly
glowing emerald."

"I see."  He paused, then said, "What did touching my ear prove?  You
asked me if my ears were real when we first met, n'est-ce pas?  What do
you see?"

"Your ears are like twice as long as they should be, and pointy, like
an elf or like Spock's ears on Star Trek.  You can't tell?"

He put his hand up to his ear, and felt around experimentally.  "They
just feel like ears to me," he said, after exploring for a moment.
"This is what my ears have always felt like."

"Have you touched anyone else's ears?  I mean, like felt the ends?"

"Of course... Although obviously I wasn't thinking on this particular
topic at the time.  May I?"  He held his hand half outstretched.
Aurelia nodded her assent, her eyes oddly fearful.

Daniel stretched out his hand, and gently touched her ear, tracing up
from earlobe to tip.  Aurelia, whose emotions were running at a
stronger pace than normal, had to restrain a sudden surge of desire.
He pulled back his hand, and said, "You have ears as well.  I don't
detect any obvious difference, I'm afraid."

Aurelia sat, looking down at the table, and the food which was steaming
visibly less than when it had arrived.  She felt a hot flush creeping
up her face.  She suddenly decided that she needed to be anywhere other
than here, and hurriedly got up, nearly overturning the table into
Daniel's lap in the process.  "I... have to..." she stuttered, trying
to make an excuse, any excuse.

"No, wait!  Sit down, please, I don't think you're crazy!"  He stood up
hastily as well, and put his hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her
down.  She tugged free, snagged her coat and purse, and hurried out of
the restaurant as the first rush of tears and shame threatened to
encompass her whole being.  Daniel hesitated, uncertain how to handle
the situation.  He started after her, and became aware of the maitre d'
moving to block his way out.  He paused, pulled a credit card out of
his wallet and pressed it into the man's hands, saying, "I'll be right
back, I promise."  He hurried after Aurelia, and the maitre d'
subsided.

He caught up to her half way up the block on 2nd.  "Aurelia, wait!
Calm down!"  He matched pace with her, and tried to grab her arm.
"Come back to the restaurant with me, let's discuss this.  Please!"
She tried to shrug free of his arm again, but he kept a firm grip.  "I
am fascinated by your story, but I don't know what to make of it.  I
think I'm a normal mortal man.  Please, stop and look at me."

She did stop, and turned to look at him.  Around them, the bustling
night life of Belltown murmured and slid past like water around a pair
of stationary stones.  Cars wheezed up the slight incline.  Somewhere,
a loud male voice called out to a taxi.  "That's better.  Look.  I
don't know what I am.  Perhaps you're right.  Let's go back to the
restaurant and finish our dinner, and we can discuss this, and decide
the question on its merits.  I assure you, I don't think you've passed
the horizon of sanity, nor do I necessarily disagree with your
assessment of me.  There's no need to react so strongly.  Will you come
back with me?  Please?"

Aurelia blinked a few tears out of her eyes.  She was clearly
distraught, but was as clearly hopeful that she'd found another ally in
a world where she expected to only find enemies.

They walked back to the restaurant at a much slower pace, and Daniel
grasped Aurelia's hand in his own, which only started her crying again.

Chapter


They sat down at the table again, and there followed a moment of
silence in which Aurelia felt like her soul unravelled a little bit, in
a way which was at once both frightening and profoundly welcome.  She
relaxed out of a tension she had been unaware she'd held.  She didn't
know how long it had been there.  Daniel, for his part, seemed to be at
ease, but she couldn't tell if he was any more or less at ease than he
normally was.

They spontaneously and suddenly found themselves smiling at each other.
Daniel was the first to break the silence.  "You were right, this is a
conversation we should have when there is more leisure to discuss at
length.  However, I wanted to assure you on one point: your tale,
although fantastic, does not leave me with any desire to part company.
On the contrary, I find it fascinating, and I find myself urging to
hear the whole story in all possible detail.  Without delving into deep
conversation on the subject, I've often thought I was apart from the
rest of humanity in some fundamental way.  I would be as shocked to
discover it was due to an inherent deviation from the bloodline as
anything else.  I trust that is how this works?  One is fairy or human
by inheritance?"

Aurelia nodded a silent yes, not quite trusting herself to speak yet.

"Very good, then.  Perhaps that explains my kinship with certain of my
fellows which doesn't exist with others.  It seems as plausible as any
other explanation, honestly.  It could go some length to explaining why
my eye was drawn to you lo these many weeks ago."  He smiled, his face
softening more than she'd previously seen, and there was a surge of
emotion stuff with a sky-blue color to it.

"Ok," was her only response.  She still felt like she was on the verge
of tears, and didn't want to tip over again.  She picked up her fork,
and toyed with the food that had cooled on her plate.  She looked up at
him again, and smiled hesitantly.  It didn't take second sight for him
to understand that she was feeling strongly right now.

"Good," he said, his voice softer, and his normal imperious tone
noticeably reduced.  "Perhaps we should address ourselves to our meal
before it cools completely."

Chapter

They finished their meal, and attended the show at the Jewelbox: it was
a burlesque show with a Dr. Who theme, one of many such burlesque
revival shows sweeping the city.  Aurelia had been nonplussed to find
it was a stripping show, but nonetheless found herself cheering along
at the obviously enthusiastic performers, and left with a clearer idea
of the difference between a strip show and burlesque.


Daniel once again offered her a ride home, and she once again accepted.
A bus trip made a little more sense from Belltown, compared to their
previous date, but not much: it would involve a transfer downtown,
and bus service was increasingly unreliable as the night wore on.
In any case, she didn't feel like parting company with him just yet.

"I splurged on a garage," he said breezily, as they walked back past
Marrakesh on the way to his car.  "Parking in Belltown is simply
atrocious, and ten dollars seemed a worthwhile investment in the
enjoyment of the evening."  They walked along for a minute in silence.
Behind them, the real night life of Belltown was just settling into its
rhythm as the frat boys hopped from bar to bar, and the theaters and
music venues disgorged their patrons.

"So... You really don't think I'm crazy, with all that stuff I was
talking about?"  They had avoided the topic through the rest of dinner
and the performance.  Aurelia glanced at Daniel's face, although it
didn't betray anything beyond his normal shrouded smile.

"I don't think you're crazy, no.  My own experience with the world
suggests that there is more present than we are generally aware of.
There's no particular example I can illuminate for you, this is merely
a general sense.  To discover that fairies are real -- and humans are too
dull to see them -- presents me with no particular hurdles to belief.
It follows that seeing auras and visions are reasonable, as is the
supposition that there may be an alternate land, a parallel universe
perhaps, which we may enter given the right set of circumstances.  I do
hope you'll tell me the whole story at some point," he glanced at her,
smiling with a more genuine smile.  "It sounds fascinating.

"In any event, even if all you have told me is utterly false and a
fabrication of a diseased mind (which is not the theory I'm
expounding), you would still be one of the more pleasant women I've
spent time with, regardless of sanity."

Aurelia had to re-parse that a few times before she responded, to make
sure she understood correctly.  The words had all made sense, but that
sense of subtle mockery came to her again.  "It all sounded good up
until that last bit," she said, smiling to cover her consternation.

"Oh, take no heed of me," said Daniel, in a much more jocular tone.  
"I'm a natural pessimist sometimes.  I have interacted with some truly
unbalanced individuals.  You are not among them.  If you suffer from
any fault, it is a lack of confidence in yourself.  I have no doubt
that what you're seeing is real to you, and I am in no position to
judge the reality of it myself, so it is as sensible to call it real as
it is to take any other view of it.  I hope you don't mistake my
meaning."

"No," said Aurelia, thinking it over quickly.  "No, I get what you're
saying.  You're right, there's no way for anyone else to know that what
I'm seeing is real.  Well, in a way there is, Stuart could tell you
about my disappearance and reappearance."

"Who is Stuart?"

Aurelia was not sufficiently distracted by her own situation to miss
the hint of jealousy, just a faint strain, which was present in
Daniel's voice.  She smiled briefly to herself, then said, "Stuart is a
friend of mine, who has been helping me figure out what's going on.
He's a mythology student at UW.  He's a huge nerd."  The way she said
"nerd" made it clear that this was not an insult.

"Ah," said Daniel.  "What has he had to say about your situation?"

"Well, we've mostly talked about what's happening from a mythological
standpoint.  He thinks I'm hooked into Celtic myths somehow, I guess
all the fairies and powers and things fit pretty well there.  He was
walking with me when I was pulled into Tir na Tuatha, which is the name
of the fairy land.  Or, I guess, a fairy land.  It's possible there are
others, thinking about your comment about alternate universes.  Anyway,
he's been very helpful, and sweet.  He stayed up to watch over me after
I came back.  I was a mess: you're not supposed to eat anything in
fairy land, or you'll get stuck there.  I was there for four days, and
didn't eat once, but I had some help with, I guess, forgetting that I was
hungry.  When I got back, he bought me a meal, which I still owe him
for, and I guess I pretty much passed out.  He dragged me back to his
dorm, which was close by, and let me sleep it off.  He said he stayed
up the whole time, terrified I'd be dragged back at any moment."

"Goodness," said Daniel, unlocking Aurelia's door, and pulling it open
for her.  He shut the door once she was in, and got settled himself.
"Stuart sounds like a fine fellow.  Have you known him long?"

"No, I actually only met him a month or two ago.  I went to the big
library at UW to look up information on second sight and fairies.  I
didn't really know what I was doing, and he helped me.  Actually, the
first time I saw him, he handed me a book sort of at random, and
disappeared in a cloud of what I assume was embarrassment.  And in my
case, I mean literally a cloud.  It was blue-green."  She smiled at the
memory.  "I ran into him again, and we started talking about all this
stuff.  Abstract at first, but at some point I told him why I was
interested.  I figured he'd dismiss me as being crazy too, actually.  I
was surprised when he didn't.  I seem to be having good luck with
that."

"Perhaps the world is more willing to believe than you think," said
Daniel, paying most of his attention to turning onto 2nd.  "Or perhaps
you have a hitherto unsuspected facility for determining individuals
who are likely to belive you."  He made the turn, and accelerated up
the street.

Aurelia sat for a moment, digesting that.  "I suppose you might be
right," she said.  "But I've only told a few people.  Well, really,"
she counted on her fingers, "only three.  You, Stuart, and my friend
Jenn.  Still.  It's nice to have some people I can talk to about it.  I
felt *super* lonely at first, like I was the only sober person at the
party.  I wish any of you could see what I see."

"Do you really think I'm not human?" asked Daniel, evidently still
wrestling with the idea.

"Well, you don't look entirely human.  As far as I can tell, I look human
(hah, ask me about mirrors), but I'm not, if Mab is to be belived."

"Who's Mab?"

"Oh, she's... one of the people I met in Tir na Tuatha.  It's possible
she's the Seelie Queen, I think that's the right name.  Anyway, she
said that I'm part of a prophecy somehow, but she didn't tell me what
the prophecy was.  She said I had to be fairy-born to fulfil it,
though."

"I should think you'd want to find out what the prophecy says."

"Yeah, I do, but I don't know how.  I hadn't really thought about it
much.  But anyway, back to your question.  You have elongated ears, and
your eyes absolutely glow green.  I've never seen another person with
eyes like that.  I mean, they don't actually generate light or
anything, but it seems like they do."

"That sounds like a trick worthy of Stephen Spielberg."

"Yeah, a lot of this stuff has seemed like something from a Harry
Potter movie.  Only, it's not.  They have the effects wrong.  I can't
really describe how, but what I see isn't really the same, and of
course in the movies you don't actually experience it as reality, no
matter how real it seems in the moment.  I think your brain always
knows the movie is fake.  I know what I'm seeing is real, which makes
it so much more profound than some special effect."  Aurelia paused,
and looked out the window as Pike Street slid past, up the hill toward
Boren.  There was a thin but steady stream of people walking up and
down the hill.

"You said something about mirrors a moment ago?  What about mirrors?"

"Oh yeah.  You know how in movies they'll show a vision coming through
a crystal ball or something?  Mirrors are like that for me.  More and
more as time goes on, I can't look in a mirror without seeing a vision
of some kind.  I've kind of stopped looking in them at this point.  I
had to use my camera phone to make sure my makeup looked ok for
tonight," she smiled sheepishly at Daniel.

"I can assure you, your makeup was ideally suited to the occasion.  You
look marvelous."  Daniel smiled at her, and looked like he was on the
verge of caressing her cheek when the light changed, and he jammed the
transmission into first and started them moving up the hill.

They drove in silence, and he turned onto Summit.  He pulled up in
front of her building.  They'd taken a circuitous route to get to her
apartment, but she didn't mind.

"Here you are," he said.  She didn't make a move to get out.  They
locked eyes for a long moment.  "I should park the car," he said.

"Yes, you should park the car."

Chapter

They found miraculous parking, only a block and a half away.  For a
Friday night, it would be typical to park half a mile away after
circling for 20 minutes.  To find parking immediately felt like divine
intervention.

As the car's engine shuddered to a halt, before it had even stopped
spinning, Daniel leaned over toward Aurelia.  She was milliseconds
behind him, and they met together in the middle.  The kiss started with
surprising tenderness, but ended with a kind of manic ferocity.  Daniel
fought comically with his seatbelt, and finally managed to unbuckle it.
He put his hand along the bottom of her skull, resting on her neck.

"We should go up," he murmured.  The car ticked randomly as it cooled.

Aurelia put her hand on his.  Their foreheads touched as they looked
into each other's eyes, so close that they appeared to each other to
have only a single large eye each.  She smiled.  "We should."  She
kissed him again, which set them off on a second bout.

When they emerged again, Daniel said, "We're never going to move at
this rate.  I want very much to be upstairs at this moment.  We should
make that happen."  His accent had once again softened, along with his
speech, so that he sounded nearly normal.

Aurelia just nodded.  She unbuckled her own seatbelt, much more
gracefully, and popped open the door, stepping out onto the sidewalk.
Daniel joined her in a moment.

Aurelia spotted something out of the corner of her eye, and looked
across the street to spy a vaguely familiar shape: it was the winged
fairy who gave her the ring.  She turned back to Daniel, and stepped
forward, trying to ignore the looming figure to her right.  All the
ardour dropped out of her mind, and she just wanted to get off the
street.  He stepped with her, mistaking the reason for her hurry.

They walked briskly back to her apartment.  Daniel clung tightly to her
arm, laughing lightly as they hurried along.  Aurelia tried not to
glance back over her shoulder.  She didn't want Daniel to know the
fairy was so close.  Finally, the curiosity was too strong, and she
risked a glance.  There was no looming fairy in sight, but she was very
aware of the number of shadows on the street which would completely
hide him.

She had her keys ready before they reached the outer door, and they
were quickly inside and up the two flights to her apartment.  She let
Daniel into the apartment, and shut the door behind them, leaning
against it in relief.  Of course, it was unlikely a mere door would
stop him if the fairy wanted to get to her, she was wise enough to know
that at this point.  Still, long habit made her feel much more relaxed
once the door was closed and the bolt thrown.

"What's wrong," asked Daniel, finally clueing in to her changed mood.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Aurelia, trying mask her anxiety.  "I thought
maybe we were being followed out there.  I'm just glad to be inside."
Her fingers unconsciously brushed the iron knife nestled in her pocket.
Phillip had returned surprisingly quickly with the sheath, which was
made from stiff brown leather, with a Celtic knotwork pattern hammered
into it.  The stitching was well done in white thread, and the corners
were reinforced with copper rivets.  He'd smiled apologetically and
explained that he'd gotten carried away.  Embarrased by the effort which
had clearly gone into it, she'd pressed twenty dollars into his hand
and wouldn't be pursuaded to take it back.

Daniel glanced toward the window, then moved over to it to look out
onto the street below.  "I don't see anything unusual down there.  I
think we're probably alright."  He smiled back at Aurelia, and moved
tentatively toward her, uncertain now that the mood had been broken.

"No," said Aurelia, trying not to feel hunted.  "You wouldn't see it."
She moved into his arms, and tried a tentative kiss, but she really
wasn't feeling it.  The sight of the fairy had shaken her too badly.

Daniel searched her face, trying to determine if he'd done anything
wrong.  She pulled back and sat down on the couch with a sigh.  "Come
sit down with me."  She patted the cushion next to her, and Daniel
glided down into it.  He looked an inquiry at her.

"You remember how I said I was afraid the Queen was sending people
after me?"  He nodded, remaining silent.  "I saw another fairy out
there just now.  It was the one who gave me the ring, and gave me
second sight, or however it worked.  I just saw him for a second, and
maybe I didn't see him at all.  But it just reminded me of this whole
problem.

"I don't know what side he's on.  I don't really know why the Queen
wants me.  I don't even know if she's actually sending fairies after
me.  It may all just be paranoid fantasy, but she was certainly
searching for me in Tir na Tuatha, and I got the impression she doesn't
give up when she wants something."

Daniel nodded, and said, "They often don't."

"What do you mean," said Aurelia, suddenly alarmed.  Did he know more
about fairies than he was letting on?

"The rich and powerful.  They become fixated on things and pursue them
relentlessly.  This Queen is at least powerful in her world, and
probably rich as well."

Aurelia relaxed a bit.  "Right.  So I've been thinking about this for a
while: this guy who gave me the ring, assuming he actually did anything
other than hand me a funny piece of metal, what was his motivation.  I
think he told me I chose myself, but then Mab said I was chosen at
birth.  When I met him the first time, I was really drunk for reasons
I'd rather not talk about just now."  She paused, and made an "ugh"
noise to herself as she remembered her mental state at the time.

"Anyway, what does he have to gain by giving away a
several-hundred-dollar ring, assuming it's not a museum piece worth
millions?  Why give me the ring or second sight?  What if he's working
for the Queen, and whatever their reason for wanting me, what if he's
also trying to get me.  I mean, he must know where I live by now.
Hell, the Queen probably knows where I live, I mean I saw her in the
mirror," she jerked her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the
bathroom.  "She could probably see me too.  I don't know exactly how
that all works, but that seems pretty likely."  She paused, and gazed
at Daniel for a second.

"I'm sorry, this is all so weird.  I'm sitting here with this
ridiculously hot guy, and instead of making out, we're talking about
how the Queen of the fairies wants to kidnap me for reasons I don't
understand.  Part of me," she put her hand gently along Daniel's
jawline, "really wants to get on with the making out part.  But I'm
feeling so weird right now, I don't think I can.  I'm sorry."  Her face
expressed her regret more eloquently to him than her words could.

Daniel sat up straighter, and put his hand up to hers, holding it
against his face.  "Then we shall wait.  I'm sorry too, but I would
never want to make you unhappy."

"Oh, it's not you.  It's nothing to do with you.  You're awesome and
amazing and perplexing and great.  It's just this weird situation I'm
in.  Magical super-powers, it turns out, are not all they're cracked up
to be."  They sat back in the sofa, Daniel curling his hands around
hers.

After a few minutes, he got up and walked over to the light switch,
shutting off the lights in the apartment.  "If you don't mind the
liberty," he said, half mockingly, as he resumed his seat.

"No," she said, grabbing his hand again.  She looked up into his face.
"Stay here tonight?"

"I would enjoy nothing more."

She leaned her head back onto his shoulder.  "I could really use a friend
right now."

Chapter

They awoke the next morning to the sound of rain pelting against the
window.  Aurelia looked into Daniel's face, and smiled.  He'd slept an
hour longer than her, but she enjoyed the quiet of the morning, and lay
curled around him, feeling surprisingly content.  They were both still
dressed, and Aurelia enjoyed the feeling of his shirt against his skin,
warm and dry and smooth.

He smiled back.  His hair was amusingly tousled, and stood up at odd
angles even with his head on the pillow.  "What time is it?"

Aurelia stretched and looked at her clock radio's display.  "Ten.  Just
past ten."

"I wonder if I have a parking ticket yet."  He smiled muzzily, not
particularly concerned either way.

"Probably not," said Aurelia, based on nothing at all.  She'd never
owned a car in Seattle, and the sum total of her experience with
driving and parking in the city had been through Jason, who had
excellent parking luck.

Daniel looked outside, squinting against the comparatively bright
window light.  "It's raining," he said after a moment's examination of
the situation.  "Sorry," he said, looking back at Aurelia and smiling
with a significantly more goofy look on his face than she'd ever seen
before, "I'm not at my best in the morning."

"Don't worry," said Aurelia, "I don't expect you to be.  Your hair is
pretty ridiculous, though."  She tried smoothing it down, but the spiky
mess just popped back up.  "Thanks for staying here with me.  That was
exactly the right thing."

"Oh, good."  He shut his eyes and lay back.  "I can't remember, did I
do anything untoward?"

Aurelia smiled at the odd phrasing.  "No, you were a perfect
gentleman."

"Oh, how unfortunate."  He grinned at her to show he was joking.  "We
should correct that."

"Mmm," said Aurelia, playing at being noncommittal.  She dropped back
to horizontal, her face an inch from Daniel's head.  "Maybe," she said.
She brushed her lips against his neck, which had sprouted a
prickly stubble since last night.

"Oh," he said, turning to her.  Their lips met, and his hand ran down
her side and back, coming to rest twined into her hair.  There was, at
this point, no more need for words.

Chapter

Aurelia stepped from the shower, wrapped in a robe, and called out,
"Your turn!  I even left you some hot water."  She pulled Daniel up
from the bed and pulled him into an embrace which was literally steamy,
her skin still hot from the shower.  She kissed him, pulling him into
close contact with a tight hug.  He responded, and found himself
kissing slowly down the curve of her neck.  Aurelia laughed, and pulled
his head back.  "No, silly!  Now is shower-time.  I can't spend all day
in bed."

"Are you sure?" he murmured into her neck, returning to his previous
position.

She paused for a moment, as if considering.  It was very nice feeling
his body pressed into hers, the thrilling tickle of his lips working
down her neck.  "I'm sure," she said, in a soft tone.  "We'll have to
find some more time in your busy schedule, though."  Her voice changed
to a more commanding tone.  "Now, off to the showers with you!"

Daniel stepped back and saluted smartly.  "Yes, ma'am!"  He set about
collecting his clothing, which was located at random intervals about
the room, then moved to the bathroom.  In a moment, Aurelia heard the
shower start up.  She dropped the robe to the floor and considered her
clothing options.

It was with a considerable shock that she heard the words, "I said, he
no good," from the corner of the room.  She shrieked and dropped down,
grabbing up the robe to cover herself.  The little brownie was sitting
in the corner, atop a pile of books.

Aurelia quickly pulled the robe on, turning her back to the little man
as she arranged and tied it.  When she turned back, her face was full
of rage.  "Listen, you little shit!  You don't know!  He may be Daoine
Sidhe, but so am I!  Why aren't you warning me against myself!?  God!
Is there no fucking way to get rid of you?"  She stood over him, livid.

He looked defiantly up at her.  "Daoine Sidhe?  How you learn old
language?  He still bad, fairies not trustable.  Wicked.  Mischief.
Always cause trouble."

Aurelia paused, trying to contain her anger, which was compounded by
the shock of finding a little gnomish man looking at her just as she'd
dropped her clothing on the ground.  "You're a fairy."  She stared down
at him.  He didn't flinch.  "Why should I trust you?  You're full
fairy, you're completely Daoine Sidhe.  He, at least," she pointed
through the wall to the bathroom, where the shower rumbled merrily, "is
only part fairy.  If fairies are so untrustworthy, why should I trust
you?"

He didn't have a response to this.  He looked down, finally saying,
"House fairies trustworthy.  Home and hearth.  We no destroy home and
hearth.  Other fairies..."  He trailed off meaningfully.

"Augh!" she spun around to pace away from the brownie.  The shower shut
off with a thud, and she turned again to face him.  In a quieter but
clearly commanding tone, she said, "Leave me alone.  He's not a
problem, and I don't need your help figuring out who I should sleep
with.  Fuck off, and stay out of my hair!  When he gets out of the
shower, you better be gone, or the knife comes out, and I'm not using
the handle this time.  Got it?"

The little man sat, sullenly, not showing any clear response.

Finally, he got up, and walked into the living room.  Aurelia was
pretty sure if she looked out there, he would be nowhere to be seen.
She wondered how he managed to be invisible even to her, whether he
were actually turning invisible, or were just hiding cleverly.

Huffing in annoyance, she quickly pulled together some clothes, and
hurriedly changed into them, throwing together a pair of tastefully
ripped jeans, a pink bra, black t-shirt, and a heavy grey sweater.
She was just sitting on the bed tying her lowtops on when Daniel came
back in.  He looked refreshed, although he still needed to shave.
At least his hair was no longer sticking out in all possible directions.

Aurelia stood, and found her annoyance at the brownie fading as she
looked at Daniel.  Clearly he wasn't "no good."  He smiled at her
examination of him.

"You, my dear," he said, moving toward her and taking her in his arms,
"are more delightful than I'd ever imagined.  I chose well that night."

"I guess we both did."  She leaned in and kissed him, meaning for it to
be a quick kiss, but it ended up lasting a good while.  She felt his
penis shift and expand, and pulled away, grinning playfully.  "Now now.
I have things to get done today, and I'm sure you do too."  He
grimaced, and shook his forefinger at his crotch in admonishion.

"My regard for you is plain," he said, looking up a little sheepishly.
"I shall leave you to your business.  I trust we will repeat this some
time in the very near future."

"Yes.  I'll have my people," she said with mock gravity, inclining her
head, "call your people.  We'll find a way to sandwich it into the
schedule."  She grinned, unable to hold the pretense any longer.  She
leaned back into him and gave him a peck on the cheek.  "Now scoot.  No
more of your dallying."

"Yes, ma'am!"  He grabbed up his coat, which was lying on the couch,
and turned back to her.  "This has been truly delightful.  You have
captured my heart, Aurelia Stanton.  I pray you won't do anything
foolish with it."  He grinned impishly, and turned for the door.  Half
way through it, he turned back and said, "Watch out for evil fairies,"
evidently remembering her change of mood the previous night.  He pulled
the door gently shut behind him.

Aurelia leaned against the doorframe into the kitchen, and stared at
the front door he had just disappeared through.  That boy was clearly
going to be trouble.

Chapter

Aurelia sat in the middle of the floor in her living room.  She'd
shoved the coffee table aside, and was sitting in the center of the
area rug that took up most of the floor.  She had her eyes closed, and
was sitting cross-legged.  It was late in the afternoon, and the sun
was just setting outside.  Aurelia concentrated.

She was trying to force a vision to come.

She'd initially avoided the new age books on the subject of second
sight, but out of curiosity had looked at a few of them in the library
the previous week.  She'd waited until Stuart had left for class before
doing it, slightly ashamed to be looking for wisdom in a place they
both nominally agreed was silly and full of ridiculous ideas.

One of the ones she'd looked at provided instructions which were
somewhere between meditation and magic visualization, but which seemed
to resonate with her.  She'd decided to give it a try, figuring it
couldn't hurt anything.

She sat, with her eyes closed.  Steadied her breathing, until it was
deep and regular.  She tried to visualize, in her mind's eye, a vision.
She realized after a short while that trying to visualize a vision was
silly, and that she needed to be more specific.

Still breathing deeply, she instead imagined herself, sitting on the
floor, as seen from across the room.  She concentrated very hard on the
image, trying to precisely envision how she must look: the clothes she
was wearing, the way her hair was tied back, the gold ring on her left
hand, the iron ring on her right.  The iron knife in its sheath,
sitting in front of her on the floor like a talisman.  She found
herself tensing up, trying to exert physical effort as if it equated to
mental effort.

She gave up, relaxing again, and to her surprise, found herself
standing on the other side of the room, looking at her sitting figure.
She was so surprised, she opened her eyes, and looked to see if she was
really standing across the room.  There was a moment of confused double
vision, then she was sitting on the floor again, staring at the window
that overlooked the street.  She sat wonderingly for a moment, then
closed her eyes to try again.

Consistently, she was unable to force it.  No matter how hard she
concentrated, she couldn't see from that remote vantage point again.
However, on some of her attempts, when she'd relax again, she'd pop
into that other state, never able to maintain it for long.  She also
couldn't do it consistently.

After nearly an hour of this, she gave up, and got creakily to her
feet.  Her hips and knees protested at having sat for so long in the
same position.  She drew a glass of water, and considered her progress
while sipping at it.  There was a moment, an odd feeling, that she'd
started to feel just before she popped into the other state.  The book
hadn't talked about any of this, but she figured the book was just new
age crap, and she'd stumbled on this new ability by chance.

In the back of her mind, Aurelia has been mulling over everything that
had happened, and something had occurred to her: in the two dreams of
ancestors (if that's what they were), the dream-woman had told her that
she needed to be good at second sight, implying that there was some
kind of challenge coming.  She'd dismissed the warning at the time,
becuase she couldn't turn *off* the second sight normally.  Then she'd
remembered how she more or less didn't see any emotion colors in Tir na
Tuatha.  There were odd sights, to be sure, but she had a feeling she
wasn't seeing those with second sight.

She'd become concerned that, now that there was a clear threat, she
might be deluding herself about her ability to handle it.  What if her
time in Tir na Tuatha had been a warning that she didn't really know
what she was doing?  Certainly she didn't know what she was doing, but
perhaps the assumption about always being able to use second sight
wasn't correct.

So, she was practicing, or trying to.  It was hard to know how to
practice something that always seemed to be working.  The ability to
move outside her own head and see from a distance was certainly a new
thing, and she felt like perhaps this was the kind of thing she needed
to be working on.

She finished her glass of water, and set the glass down.  The kitchen
was a mess, and she felt a pang of guilt that she hadn't taken time to
clean at all lately.  It was easy to excuse, with Daniel, and her time
with Stuart, and the discombobulation she still felt lingering after
the trip to Tir na Tuatha.  She decided there was no time like the
present, and started wandering around, gathering dirty dishes, and
throwing away random trash and dead food she'd left lying around.

As she worked, she tried to imagine seeing herself from a distance, but
couldn't get the change to happen.  She stayed resolutely fixed in her
own head.  She wondered if it was something she had to be sitting still
for.  Gradually the dirty dishes were transformed into clean dishes in
the drying rack, and she turned her hands to other cleaning tasks.  The
living room became more organized, although she avoided the pile of
paper on the little table: unemployment paperwork, bills, random things
she'd gotten in the mail and hadn't yet recycled.  She tackled her room
next, gathering up the dirty laundry from the floor and sorting it into
piles.  Colors there, whites there, delicates there.  As she was
cleaning, she uncovered the rock with the vein of quartz, and stuffed
it into her pocket with a little exclamation of pleased surprise.

Laundry sorted, she considered whether she really wanted to try doing
laundry now.  It was Saturday night, and the laundry machines in the
basement were unlikely to be occupied, or so she hoped.  It was a crap
shoot, and with only two washers and two dryers serving a building of
twelve units, they were nearly always full of someone else's clothes.

She loaded her piles into her lone laundry basket, and decided to risk
the journey.  She had just enough quarters to do all her laundry (a
stack nearly two inches tall).  Even on her way down the stairs, she
tried doing the visualization trick, but no further luck.  It seemed
she had to be sitting still for it to work.

After getting the laundry started -- the machines had been blessedly
free -- she tromped back up to her apartment, and sent Jenn a text
message inviting her to brunch the next day.  They hadn't seen each
other for several days, and Aurelia wanted to talk about everything
that had happened with Daniel.  She was also curious about this guy
Jenn was now apparently seeing, and about whom Jenn had been reluctant
to divulge much information.

She sat down and tried the visualization trick again, and ended up
amusing herself the rest of the night trying to get it to work.

Chapter


She was standing at the door again.  Aurelia was excited, now relishing
the strange journey past all the women.  She pushed it open, and her
mom was on the other side, urging her on as before.  She got to the
next door, and looked harder once she'd entered the room, trying to
place the faces in the portraits.  She really only had her mother and
herself to go on.  The faces didn't necessarily look familiar, but it
was possible there was a resemblance between some of them.  Were these
really her ancestors?

She looked up at the picture of Mabel MacLeod again, but this time the
portrait was still, and didn't speak to her.  She opened the door,
glancing behind her as she passed through.  She continued on until she
was at the hut of the dream-woman, passing through.  Aurelia felt like
she was in better control this time.  She knew it was a dream, and had
some ideas what was happening.  She'd actually met the dream-woman face
to face!

There she was again, this time sitting by the fire, hand-sewing on
something.  The woman looked up, and motioned Aurelia close.  As she
came closer, Aurelia could see that she was stitching some kind of
pattern on the cloth, which was surprisingly fine and white.  "What is
it?" she asked, looking up at the woman's face.

"You should know," she said.  She pinned the needle up in the corner so
it wouldn't get lost, and spread the cloth out on her lap.  In the
flickering light of the fire, Aurelia could see that the pattern was
odd, not repeating, almost looking organic.  She studied it for a
moment, but couldn't tell what it was supposed to be.

"Is it a picture?" She reached out and touched the stitching, which was
amazingly even and fine.  Aurelia had tried hand-sewing things as a
girl, and her efforts had been almost comically coarse compared to
this.  Her own mother had provided no useful instruction, and what she
had learned had mostly come from a friend's mother, who sat sewing with
the two of them for a few hours once.

The woman scowled, and, as if leading a child to the correct answer,
said, "Look again, child.  See."  She gestured down at the cloth.

Aurelia peered closer, realized this wasn't helping, and stood up, to
look at it from a greater distance.  Suddenly the meaning was clear: it
was a map.  "Oh," she said.  The woman nodded, satisfied.  She set the
cloth down, and stood abruptly.  Grabbing Aurelia by the shoulders, she
spun her around to face the low thatched roof, where a similar cloth
was pinned up so it hung free from the sloping surface.  It showed a
map of somewhere Aurelia didn't recognize.

The woman said, "Take this," handing her the cloth she'd been working
on.  Aurelia pulled it open and glanced between the two.  They were the
same, or so nearly the same that she couldn't see any difference.

"Where is it?"

"Tir na Tuatha."

Aurelia's face registered surprise, her eyebrows shooting up, as she
looked back at the woman.  The woman nodded very slightly, then said,
"I cannot be helping you, girl.  You must help yourself.  You must see.
The Old Woman rises, rises.  You are in constant peril.  Come."

The woman walked out the door of the hut, ducking under the
lintelpiece, and stood beside the house, staring about.  Aurelia stood
next to her, also staring around.  She tucked the cloth into her
pocket.  "What are we looking at?" she asked.  All she could see was
dark heath, with hills rising in the distance.  The quarter-moon shone
above them, and stars twinkled silently in the cold night.

"You must see."

"I don't know how!  I've been trying, but I don't know what I need to
do."

"Use the stone," she said.  Aurelia checked, and found the stone in her
pocket, next to the cloth.  She grasped it in her hand, felt the iron
ring tap gently against it.  "Concentrate."  Aurelia did, but the heath
remained just a heath under a dim moon.

"I don't see anything."

The woman looked at Aurelia impatiently, and pulled up her right hand,
looking at the iron ring.  "Iron kills magic," she said, dropping
Aurelia's hand again.

"But," started Aurelia.

"You must choose."

"You told me before," said Aurelia, again cut off before finishing.

"What I said was truth.  Iron defeats the Old Woman and her kind.  It
also kills magic.  Magic may aid you where iron cannot; likewise iron
may aid you.  It is up to you to decide."

Aurelia tried shifting the stone to her other hand, and felt a
corresponding clink as the gold ring touched the stone.  There was no
instant reveal, but she slowly became aware that the field was occupied
by figures she hadn't noticed before.  It wasn't that she hadn't seen
them, it was just that she hadn't been aware of them somehow.

"Is it magic?"

"No.  I said before.  The magic's in you."

"But I don't understand..."  Aurelia was cut off with a gesture from
the old woman.  She gestured out to the field, indicating that Aurelia
should pay attention to what was happening.

The figures, which were still hazy and indistinct, were slowly
unfolding, almost as if they were growing out of the ground.  She
couldn't see any of them well, but had the impression of many different
sizes and shapes, mostly human or at least humanoid.  As they stood
taller and straighter, they became more defined.  Aurelia couldn't tell
if her own vision was improving, or they were actually becoming more
visible.  She tried shifting the stone back to her right hand, with the
iron ring, and saw that the figures slowly faded out of sight.  She
moved the stone back and they slowly returned, some fading into sight
quickly, others taking more time.

"D'ye see?"  The woman was looking at Aurelia with a stern inquisitive
look on her face.

"Yes."

"D'ye See?"

Aurelia looked out again, feeling herself tense up as she tried to
concentrate.  Figures in the field faded in and out of sight apparently
at random.  "I don't... What are they doing?"

The woman said something that sounded like "caylee," and Aurelia had a
simultaneous sense of party, social visit, feast and celebration.  Out in
the field, the figures started to dance slowly and dreamily about each
other, doing turns and swirls that reminded Aurelia of square dancing.
As her vision cleared, she became aware of giants and trolls and elves
and hobbits and dwarves among the crowd of more human-sized figures.

"They awake.  They gather.  The time approaches quickly."  The woman
turned, and led Aurelia back into the hut.  "You must be ready," she
said, ducking under the lintel.  She looked over her shoulder, and into
Aurelia's eyes.  "I cannot help you."

"Is that why you only tell me..." Aurelia started, but the woman
gestured impatiently and she stopped.

"When you return to Tir na Tuatha, you must be ready."

"Wait," said Aurelia, suddenly alarmed.  "I have to go back?"

As her response, the woman sat down again by the fire, and picked up
the piece of cloth she'd been working on, and resumed her stitching.

Aurelia awoke, and saw by the slanted lines on the ceiling that it was
still dark outside.  She felt around for it, and after a moment found
the cloth with the map on it.  She clicked on the bedside light and
looked at it, but it didn't make any sense now that she was awake.  It
was just a confusion of color and pattern.  She set it down, evicted
the brown stone to the bedside table, and turned the light off again.
Just once, it would be great to have a vision or a dream that made
sense and actually told her anything useful.

Chapter


Aurelia stood up as Jenn walked in, and gave her a hug.  They both sat
down at their little table.  They were meeting for brunch at Glo's, a tiny
restaurant nearly equidistant between their apartments.  Aurelia had
grabbed a small table for two.

"Have you been waiting long?" asked Jenn, arranging herself on her
seat.

"No, just a few minutes."  She held up her phone, which she'd been
gazing at when Jenn arrived.  "Did you see that Steve and Julia got
engaged?"  Jenn took the phone from Aurelia, and looked at the screen.

"Huh.  I wondered when they were going to get hitched.  It seemed like
a matter of time."  She picked up a menu, and looked over the choices.
She seemed to order something different every time, where Aurelia had a
few favorites that she chose between depending on her mood.

"Oh, was it that clear?  I thought they were having a rough time."
Steve and Julia had been dating since college, where Jenn and Aurelia
both knew Steve through one of the philosophy classes.  Their
relationship had seen a number of ups and downs.

"Yeah, that was half a year ago.  They patched that up, and have been
parading around like lovebirds since then.  You must not run into them
very often."  Jenn was still concentrating on her menu.

"Oh, huh."  Aurelia glanced at her own menu, already having resolved
she'd be having waffles with strawberries and a side of sausage.

Jenn looked up.  "What are you having?"

"Um," Aurelia made a pretense of looking over the menu, then said,
"Waffles and sausage, I think.  And coffee.  I did not sleep well last
night."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, I had another visit with the dream-woman, you remember me
talking about her before?"

"She gave you that weird little knife, right?  I was thinking you might
have had another kind of distraction last night."  Jenn grinned
mischeviously.

"Hah, no."  Aurelia paused, then said, with more exeuberance than she'd
really intended, "That was the night before."

"Oh rilly."  Jenn arched her eyebrows and maintained the impish grin.

"Yeah.  Well, sort of.  We just slept together on Friday, we didn't
actually, you know," Aurelia made a vaguely obscene gesture.

Jenn made an overexpressive surprised face.  "I didn't think either of
you would have that much restraint."

"Come on, give me some credit," said Aurelia, slapping Jenn's hand
playfully.  "We waited until yesterday morning."

Both women laughed, and the server chose this moment to take their
order.  Aurelia ordered the waffles and sausage, and Jenn ordered one
of the specials: a smoked-salmon Eggs Benedict with bacon.  Both
ordered coffee as well.  The coffee was poured that moment, and Aurelia
took a deep draught.

"So?" said Jenn, waggling her eyebrows suggestively, "how was it?"

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean," said Aurelia in a
fake-sounding Southern Belle accent.

"Oh come on.  I want to hear about your naked fairy action."

Aurelia blushed.  Jenn had always been the more forward of the two.
She allowed herself a moment to recover, then said, "It was nice.  I
like him.  If there's anything unusual about him, I didn't notice it."

"You think he's a keeper?"

"I dunno.  Could be.  He's kind of weird, but it's kind of charming.
All I know at this point is that I like him."  Aurelia looked down at
the table rather than meet Jenn's eyes, which were still full of bawdy
suggestion.

"Uh-huh."

"That's it.  Oh, and I don't think he knows, well, knew, that he was
part fairy.  It seemed like a total surprise to him.  I think he still
doesn't entirely believe it.  Speaking of keepers, I want to hear about
this guy you've been seeing.  I don't even know his name yet.  What's
up with that, Miss Secretive?"

"Oh," said Jenn, actually blushing a little.  This was the first time
Aurelia had seen Jenn blush in years, and was suitably impressed.

"What was that?  Did you just blush?  What the hell Jenn, is this
something big?  Or is he just really good in bed?"

"It's kinda big."

Aurelia automatically glanced at Jenn's left hand.  No unfamiliar
rings.  Jenn saw the glance, and said, "No, it's not like that.  Well,
maybe it is.  I don't know.  He might pop the question today for all I
know."

"What!?  And you've kept me in the dark about all this?"

"It all happened so fast!  We... we haven't really spent any time apart
in the last few weeks.  He's really amazing, Aurey.  I can't get enough
of him."

"Holy crap," said Aurelia, gazing wonderingly at her friend.  "Will you
say yes?"

"Probably?  I don't know for sure."

"Wait, how long have you been going out?"

"Three weeks, I think?"

"Three weeks!?  You're ready to get engaged to a guy you met three
weeks ago?  Jenn, he better be fucking President of the United States
or something.  That's a seriously short time."  Aurelia felt herself
wavering between giddy excitement for her friend, and concern that she
was moving far too fast.  Her own concerns were for the moment pushed
aside.

"Well, yeah.  I mean, when you put it that way, it does sound a bit
weird, but I just think this guy is kinda perfect for me, you know?
It's like we were made for each other."

"What's his name?"

"Oh, it's James McCreedy."

"Wait, why does that name sound familiar?"  Aurelia's gaze bore into
Jenn's, as she tried to figure out the puzzle.

"Um," said Jenn, stalling.

"Wait.  James McCreedy.  He's that guy who founded that computer
company right?  What is it.... Oh... ToggleSoft or something?"

"Yeah," said Jenn in a small voice.

"Isn't he like a zillionaire?"

"Yeah," said Jenn in a smaller voice.

"You think a zillionaire is going to ask you to marry him!?" Aurelia
shouted the words, and looked around the restaurant, suddenly aware of
how loud she was being.  The other customers, in typical Seattle
fashion, pretended nothing was amiss.

"I guess so?"  Jenn seemed to have shrunk into herself with each
exchange.  "Why are you yelling?" she asked, somewhat plaintively.

Aurelia paused, and mentally backed herself down.  She didn't mean to
be yelling.  "Ah... Sorry.  I guess I just got excited.  Jenn," she
paused not sure how to express the mixed emotions she was feeling.
"That sounds amazing.  But kinda scary.  Promise me you'll wait a few
months before you say yes to anything, ok?"

"He's really persuasive."

"I bet."

"I mean, I see what you're saying.  Lemme think about it, ok?  The
whole thing is going so quickly."

"How did you even meet him?  At your job?"

"Yeah.  We got to talking after a dinner one night, and before I knew
it, we were making out in his car.  It was kind of awesome, but also
kind of weird, because the chauffeur never left the driver's seat."

"He didn't have a problem that you were just one of the girls working
there?  I mean, that guy must be rolling in cash, seems like he'd want
to be going out with rich girls, doesn't it?"

"I guess I never thought about it.  He likes me, a lot.  He seems like
a lonely guy.  I guess it's hard being a 30 year old zillionaire, since
everyone expects you to act like rich people.  But he doesn't.  I mean,
yeah, he's got the car with the chauffeur, but I'd do that if I could
afford it.  He doesn't really get the rich people he has to schmooze
with.  He's just a regular guy, and suddenly he's rolling in cash.  I
think he wanted to find just a regular girl or something.  I guess that
was me."  Jenn grinned nervously, uncertainty plainly warring with
pleasure in her expression.

"Wow," said Aurelia, sitting back and looking across the room.  "Your
news pretty much trumps my news."

"What, you mean about Daniel?"

The food arrived, and they waited until the server was back to her
rounds before continuing.

"Yeah, about Daniel, but also," here Aurelia lowered her voice and
leaned in a little bit, "I visited the dream-woman again last night."

"What's her name, anyway?"

"I have no idea.  It's never occurred to me to ask when I'm there."

"Anyway, you visited her again.  Did she give you something else, or
was this one just advice?"

"Both.  She gave me a cloth with a map embroidered on it.  But she also
took me out to the field outside her house, and had me try to see...
fairies, I guess, who were doing this weird slow-motion dance.  She had
a word for it, but I forget it now."

"I thought you saw fairies all the time.  Why did you have to try?"

"I think the second sight works really well in our world, but it
doesn't work in Tir na Tuatha."  Aurelia's face was a bit ashen.  She
continued, "And the dream-woman said I have to go back."

"What?  No.  You don't have to go back.  That's silly.  Just stay here.
You know so much more now, right?  Just tell that Queen, whoever she
is, to fuck off.  You're human, you should stay in the human world."
Jenn's face was clouded as she considered the unfairness of the
situation.

"I had the impression I won't have much choice."  Aurelia took a bite
of her waffle, but it didn't taste as good as she'd hoped it would.
The prospect of being forced to return to the land of the fairies was,
all things considered, not the best spice.

Chapter

Aurelia and Stuart met up again the next day, once again sitting across
from each other in the library's open main hall.  She told Stuart of
her fears as well.

"Do you think you'll be pulled back in, or will you go there of your
own free will?"  Stuart's face was concerned.  This was a danger,
plainly, but he didn't see a way he could act to protect the woman he
loved.  (Although, obviously, a love that would be epically unrequited
-- he considered whether an epic poem would be in order, and routinely
rejected the idea, despite its mythic appropriateness.)

"I don't know.  She just said that I would be returning.  God, Stuart,
I don't want to go back.  That place was awful.  I mean, it was
beautiful and all, but I don't want to be stuck there."

"You won't be stuck there, you know the move to get back out again,
right?"

"I suppose so, but what if I've forgotten it already?  I mean, that was
weeks ago, and the whole thing seems like a dream now.  I don't know if
I can remember the process.  It's more than hopping around like a crow
and jamming your foot out, after all."

"Well, good point.  Work on remembering, I guess?  Or maybe you can
find Mab again when..." he trailed off, catching Aurelia's aggrieved
eye, "I mean, if.  If you end up there.  Sorry."  He looked over the
books he had piled in front of him, suddenly eager to change the
subject.  "I was trying to find that prophecy I was thinking of.  No
luck yet, but I'll keep looking."

"Oh, good.  I suppose it would be good to know what I'm signed up for."

"Well, of course, the prophecy and the reality may not actually
coincide," he said, straightening up and adopting the air Aurelia had
come to recognize as the one he used when being strict and proper about
scholarly matters.  "It may be a really vague prophecy, or it may be
really specific, or it may not even seem to apply to you.  Prophecies
are weird that way."

"Probably like second sight is weird.  Even after all these months, I
don't really know what I'm seeing."  Aurelia felt her pessimism
reassert itself in good form.

"Well, you know the emotion clouds are emotion, right?  So that's
something.  And you can see creatures that aren't human walking around,
that's pretty cool."

"Yeah, but I don't know what the emtion stuff means.  And seeing
non-humans walking around isn't super useful.  None of them seem to
know they're non-human.  Well, except the little guys, they're pretty
clear on it."

"Wait, what 'little guys'?  Are you seeing little fairies too?"

"Oh, yeah, there's this little brownie guy who lives in my apartment
and won't leave me alone.  He definitely knows he's a fairy."

"Brownies are real too?"  Stuart boggled at her for a second, then
relaxed with a visible effort.  "Makes sense, I guess," he said more to
himself than Aurelia, "there are probably bogles and banshees and Jenny
Greenteeth and all sorts of things.  Amazing!"  He looked to be on the
verge of taking notes in his notebook, when he stopped and looked back
up at Aurelia.  "What other fairies are you seeing that are definitely
fairies?"

"Oh, um.  I don't know any of the names.  There was the little blue guy
with the super long arms and short legs.  There was my brownie, and he
said there were other house-spirits there, but I've never seen them.
There was the little wrinkled guy with the greyish skin.  There was
that troll I told you about.  There was... let's see, I guess that big
demon dog I saw right after I got mugged probably counts.  There have
been lots, I can't remember them all."


"This is amazing.  I mean, I guess it's amazing you're seeing any of
this stuff at all, but...  Man.  Why didn't you tell me about these
before?"

"I guess they slipped my mind.  I've seen a lot of really weird shit,
Stuart.  Not all of it sticks in my head."

"Fair enough," said Stuart, pulling out a notebook and scribbling some
notes on it.  "Where do you usually see the real fairies?  I mean,
the ones who don't think they're humans."  He looked up, his pencil
poised over the page.

"All over, I guess.  Obviously my brownie is in my house.  The rest I
see walking around on the street mostly.  Does it matter?"

"No, not really.  I was just curious.  Gah, I wish I could see what
you're seeing, it must be amazing!"

"Yeah, in a way it is.  It's also tiring.  And... I'm not cut out for
this stuff, Stuart.  I don't want to get dragged back there.  I'm
certainly not going willingly.  I don't want to be a mythic hero, I
just want to be a normal girl.  I'm not like an expert in karate or
parkour or something.  I'm just a normal person, who wants to live a
normal life."  Aurelia slumped, propping up her face on one hand.

Stuart reached across the table, and patted Aurelia's shoulder, feeling
at once both lame and thrilled with the contact.  "I wish I could give
you good news, Aurelia.  I don't know what's going on, but if you're
really in the middle of a mythological story, I suspect you don't have
any choice what happens.  I mean, you do, but you can't stop being the
hero of a myth.  For what it's worth, what you've experienced so far is
pretty lightweight stuff."

"What's that supposted to mean?  I was dragged off to a magical land
where I spent four days running for my life from a crazy woman with an
army at her command.  I thought I was gonna die twenty different times.
That's getting off light?"

"Well, yes.  I mean, look at Orpheus.  His wife *died*, and he had to
go down to the Underworld to get her back.  Or, I guess I don't know
the Celtic myths as well, but there are always stories of heroes who
have to go through Hell, often literally, to complete their journeys.
Spending a few days in fairyland is a pretty light load for a mythic
hero.  They usually don't have very easy lives."

"Maybe," said Aurelia, sitting back and crossing her arms as if to ward
off the bad news, "I'm not actually a mythic hero.  Maybe I'm some
other kind of figure.  I mean, women with second sight were usually
side stories, right?  Like, the hero ran into them, and based on their
advice, changed his course or did some thing, or didn't do some other
thing.  Maybe I'm just waiting for a hero to come along and ask my
advice.  Maybe I'm supposed to tell him whatever, and he goes off and
lives the shitty life based on whatever I say."

"I suppose that could be.  If there's a mythic hero running around, we
haven't found him yet, though."

"Maybe it's you.  Maybe all this stuff we're doing here is the
precursor to your story starting.  You've got a sword, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't make me a hero.  That just
makes me a nerd with a medieval history fixation.  I don't know how to
use it."

"Maybe it's Daniel.  Maybe he's the mythic hero."

"Who's Daniel?"

Aurelia was too focused on her own problems to recognize what was about
to happen.  "Oh, he's this guy I'm seeing, I guess."

Stuart had a moment where the world actually appeared to go dark.  His
vision seemed to fail, and he tightened his fists, fighting to remain
upright and conscious.  Unheeded, the pencil splintered in his hand.
"Oh," he said, his voice faint.

Aurelia saw the nova of emotion streaming from Stuart, and it took her
a moment to realize what was happening.  She needed a further moment to
formulate a response.  "Oh, Stuart, I.... It's not serious, and...
Sorry, that was rude of me," she finished, lamely.

Stuart recovered manfully, and opened his hands, looking curiously at
the shattered pencil as it fell in bits to the table.  He brushed his hand
off, and didn't see any blood on first inspection.  "No," he said, his
voice still small.  "It's ok.  I'm fine.  I just wasn't expecting...
Never mind.  Don't worry about it."  He looked up at Aurelia, who was
nearly blinded by the surging, multicolored emotion stuff gyrating
wildly around him.

"I'm sorry, Stuart.  Maybe we should call it off for today.  Anything
you want me to look for or check for Wednesday?"

"No," said Stuart, not quite in control of himself.  "No, I.... No.
I'll see you Wednesday, I guess."  He slumped in his seat, still oozing
emotion colors.  Aurelia quietly gathered her stuff up and left,
glancing delicately back at Stuart once as she left.  He was slumped in
the same position.  She felt sorry for him, but also felt a bit of
annoyance that she was still having to deal with this after making it
completely clear that she wasn't interested in him.

Chapter

Daniel had proposed the following evening for their next date.  When
Aurelia had commented that Tuesday evening seemed like a weird night
for a date, he'd laughed and proposed they should wait until the
following weekend instead.  Seeing the wisdom of his plan, she quickly
assented to the Tuesday date.

They arranged to meet at Ray's Boathouse, a comparatively ritzy
restaurant overlooking Puget Sound, and Aurelia was late.  The bus
service between Capitol Hill and Ballard didn't exist, and the
downtown-to-Ballard links were only moderately reliable.  Daniel had
apologized in advance for his inability to give her a ride, but he was
insistent on a 7 pm dinner time, and his plans kept him away until the
last minute.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, as she walked up to his table.  He was
seated at a window table, which looked out over the Sound.  There were
some lights on the peninsula on the far shore, and there was a massive
container ship slowly chugging down the channel.  Otherwise, the view
was fairly dark.  The moon was slowly dipping toward the horizon, but
it was a thin sliver, and didn't cast much light.


Daniel stood up courteously when she arrived, and helped her get
seated.  "Not a worry.  I was just gazing at our spectacular view.  The
clouds have completely cleared off, see?"  He gestured out with a grand
sweep of his arm at the mostly-dark view.  "We should go watch the
moonset at Golden Gardens when our dinner is finished.  That was my
reason for being insistent on our start time -- that should give us
sufficient leisure for a relaxed meal and the short trip to the park."
Golden Gardens was a park with a large beach that faced west, across
the Sound, and frequently played host to bonfires on the beach.

"Oh, that sounds really nice.  We're verging dangerously into 'long
walks on the beach' territory, you know," Aurelia grinned at him, and
she became aware of her own emotion by seeing it almost before feeling
her heart swell a little bit.

He smiled back, and said, "That thought had indeed occurred to me, but
I feel it's a danger we must face and defeat.  Now, please consider
your choice of delicacy.  I quite recommend the lobster, although the
dungeoness crab is also excellent...."

Chapter

The meal, as Daniel had promised, was quite good, although Aurelia had
been a bit shocked at the prices.  They weren't ridiculous, but to
someone who was living on unemployment, they were extravagant.  Daniel
winked at her when the check came, and whispered, "I'm sure you can
think of some way to compensate me," with a sly grin on his face.  She
knew he probably meant well, and had to suppress a tremor of distaste
at the implication that her love was negotiable.  It wasn't anything in
the face of the rest of the meal, though.

While the food itself was good, Daniel was in top form, and had praised
Aurelia in ways she hadn't previously been aware were susceptible to
praise.  Their conversation was lively and engaging, and her own
emotions visibly intermingled with his.  She refrained from mentioning
it, enjoying the feeling of knowing the secret of his emotion.  He
hadn't betrayed it in his conversation, and she realized that if she
hadn't had second sight, she wouldn't know that he was starting to
develop feelings for her.

At least, that's what she assumed.  The ebb and flow of the stuff made
sense.  She had started to notice, among the different people she'd
interacted with, that there seemed to be about a dozen different
classes of people, as far as colors corresponding with emotions.  One
group would show red for irritation, another might show orange or dark
blue or kelly green.  She didn't have any experience with the love
range of emotions, though, as they didn't really come up in casual
conversation, so even if she'd known which group Daniel belonged to --
and he had not thus far displayed very much emotion -- she wouldn't
have a clue what love might look like.  In any case, she didn't assume
he was displaying love necessarily, as that seemed to be a bit
premature.

For her own part, she wasn't sure what she was thinking, or feeling.
She was certainly attracted to him, and felt very positive about things
in general, but there were complicating factors.  He was a fairy,
which, no matter how much she insisted to herself was just fine, still
bothered her in some way she couldn't quite place.  When she thought
about it, she couldn't imagine being together with him in a few years,
which a friend had told her in college was the test she used to see if
a guy was worth going out with.  She'd liked it, and resolved to try it
out at her next opportunity.  It had worked with Jason, except that he
ended up having traits he never showed her until it was too late.  She
consciously cut off that line of thought -- even months later, it still
stung.

They'd finished dinner and gotten in the car for the 5 minute drive to
the park.  Aurelia was considering all this as they drove.  Daniel
drove at a sedate pace, and kept his hand folded around hers when he
wasn't shifting the transmission.  They were silent as they drove
along, but a merry smile played around his eyes for the whole drive.
She thought she'd seen threads of something else than the main emotion
weaving through his emotion stuff, but had no idea what it would be.

They arrived at the park and Daniel parked the car.  The clouds had
indeed completely cleared and they raced each other down to the water.
Aurelia was surprised Daniel would drop his reserve enough to run
through the sand, but he did.  She was starting to see more of the
whole man, and less of the wordy, erudite artist facade he presented to
the world.  She found it pleasing.

They stopped a dozen feet from the water, and stood, staring at the
descending moon, which was only a little bit above the horizon.  The
water lapped at the beach gently, phosphorescing a little bit.  They
stood, holding hands and looking out at the water and sky.

"Oh, look at all the stars!" said Aurelia, pointing up.  The city
lights still blocked out most of the stars, but the air was unusually
clear, and the dim moon did little to overpower the stars.

"Beautiful," he said, looking up as well.  The beach was clear of
bonfires, a Tuesday in late winter apparently not appealing to anyone
as a prime bonfire time.  Aurelia became aware that she was shivering,
and pulled Daniel closer to use him as a guard against the cold wind
coming off the water.

He looked over, and wrapped his arms around her, gently kissing her.
She kissed him back, and they were locked in the embrace for a minute
before he pulled back.  "Aurelia," he said, softly.

"Daniel," she said in return, smiling softly at him.  The scene was
hopelessly romantic to her mind, and she felt herself melting into him
a bit.

"I... I'm very sorry."

Confused, Aurelia pulled back and looked at him.  His tone had been
truly remorseful, absolutely out of keeping with the setting.  "What do
you mean?  What are you sorry about?  This has been an amazing evening.
There's nothing to be sorry about."

"Yes, there is.  And I am truly sorry.  I didn't have a choice."

"What do you mean?  What are you talking about?  I don't understand."

Daniel hugged her tightly, and Aurelia could see a swath of emotion
colors emanating from him, fading slowly down to almost nothing.  He
looked up, and pointed at the sky.

Aurelia looked up, and felt a chill go through her.  The stars were
completely, 100% unfamiliar.  She realized that she wasn't cold any
more.  She looked down, and saw that although they were still standing
on a shoreline, it was a grassy shore, looking out over a lake.
Fireflies, or at any rate something that flew and made light, danced
over the lake.

Daniel stepped back and took her hand gently.  "The Queen needs to see
you now."

END - To be continued